Literature / Super Supportive

"Super Supportive'' is an online LitRPG fantasy serial by Sleyca.

In 1963, aliens from another dimension arrived in the Sahara via teleport and offered the human race access to magic, medicine, and technology. In exchange, a small percentage of the population would be selected to be given Classes, Skills, and other magic abilities. These Avowed then could be summoned by Wizards to fight the corruption of Chaos and the demons it creates, or, more commonly, to do more mundane tasks.Once selected, most Avowed move to the constructed island and city state Anesidora in the South Pacific, and live normal, peaceful lives there, while elites are hired as superheroes by cities all over the world.

As a child, Alden’s parents were killed by a Supervillain, and his life was saved by the Sidekick of the superhero sent to stop him. Now a teenager in 2040, he knows that being selected is a distant possibility, but he dreams of one day joining a team as a support hero himself.

The series is a Slice of Life story that follows Alden’s life in school, work, and less mundane settings. It is currently being published on Royal Road (here) and Patreon.

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Super Supportive provides examples of:

• A Form You Are Comfortable With: The Contracts of each world can talk directly to Avowed when they are asleep, and seem to prefer making them appear in a place that is familiar to them.
• After-Action Healing Drama: After running for several days straight, Alden gets a week of magical healing.
• Aliens Speaking English: Alden meets an Artonan Mad Scientist who actually speaks English and a few other alien languages.
• A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: A character who is an empath considers himself to be Blessed with Suck, not because people's feelings are bad, but because of what they do because of those feelings. He also gets overwhelmed by other people's strong emotions.
• Augmented Reality: Avowed get an augmented reality directly into their minds, but other people can get access to the same thing if they have special glasses or eye implants.
• Awesome McCoolname: The Artonan I Contract notes that Artonans struggled over giving a number of skills appropriately poetic names for most of the original skills they created, but not so for the Artonan name for the one that ended up being Alden's - "The Bearer of All Burdens".
• Badass Teacher: Each of the MPE instructors is a badass in their own way, and a few of them are world-famous superheroes.
• Bathing Beauty: Lute often spends hours at a time in the bath tub.
• Beware the Mind Reader: The mind-reading/affecting Class, Sway, is looked on with suspicion by most people, and most are careful not to choose Skills or Spells that can be used unconsciously.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Velra family is one, having been basically built from the ground up by its matriarch, Aulia Velra, to try to monopolize the rare Chainer class, either by extensive class trading or by convincing outside individuals with Chainer to marry into their family. Alden gets kidnapped simply for having Chainer and being able to trade it, and it gets worse from there. Lute describes in lengthy detail (in a mini-arc dedicated to him) how the family features everything from emotional abuse and blackmail to actual eugenics to try to guarantee Avowed children.
• Big, Stupid Doodoo-Head: Alden learns to speak Artonan from a child, so most of the insults he knows are childish and he doesn't know many swear words.
• Bizarre Alien Senses: Artonans have an innate capacity to sense the capacity to impose one's will onto basically anything, and it is the fundamental essence of magical power. The concept is alien to humans, and the closest translation is "dominion" or "authority". Even those translations aren't quite right - when stranded in Moon Thegund, Alden realizes that having more authority makes you 'more stable' against the intrusive influence of chaos, and thus essentially lets you exist harder.
  • This forms the basis of Alden's main angst during and after the Moon Thegund incident, as he develops this sense himself, and realizes that the reason Avowed get superpowers is because their otherwise-normal authorities are 'affixed' for those purposes. What this essentially means is that unlike most Avowed, he can actively feel how a big chunk of his very existence has been pigeonholed into a rigid shape, and that it hurts. And the process of 'affixing' some of his 'free' authority in this way toward his 'bound' authority is so painful that the narrative simply skips over it.
• Can't Bathe Without a Weapon: Lexi takes his Mind Writher everywhere, including the bath.
• Conspicuous Consumption: Rabbits are sometimes looked down on for being noncombatants, but they also tend to get more frequent and lucrative summons. They "get back" at their detractors with Spree Day, in which participants go out in public and show off their wealth by having expensive things delivered to them all day or wearing fancy clothes and changing outfits throughout the day.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Any Class and Skill can be useful in the right situation, but some are so specialized that the situation might not come up often. For instance, one Skill allows its user to fix small patches of chipped paint.
• Dangerous 16th Birthday: Most people are selected at age 15 or 16, with some outliers. Since most children of Avowed are also Avowed, on Anesidora children of powerful Avowed often get a Shit Sixteen (or Seventeen) birthday present if they haven't been selected yet to help sooth their anxiety.
• Determinator: While escaping from Joe's Mad Scientist Laboratory, Alden runs for several days, carrying Kibby the whole time. He is eventually forced to take drugs that shut off pain and suffers from a Post-Victory Collapse as a result.
• Dodgeball Is Hell: In the defense portion of MPE the instructor pelts his students with tennis balls.
• Driven to Suicide: Knights are a special type of Artonan Wizard who have affixed Skills like an avowed. It turns out that affixing authority when you can feel it is excruciatingly painful, and as a result there is a system in place for Knights to honorably choose to die to end their suffering.
• Electronic Eyes:
  • Stuart has eye implants that allow him to access the Contract.
  • It is possible to get a bionic replacement for a lost eye, but Lute hasn't done so for some reason.
• Endless Corridor: When a Contract needs to have a conversation with Alden, he appears in an endless white hallway with a door that always appears in front of him even if he runs from it.
• Entropy and Chaos Magic: The stated main purpose for conscripting people from Earth and the Artonans' other resource worlds is to fight chaos and its corruptive influence.
• Equivalent Exchange: Wordchains are a system of magic that technically anyone with fingers and the ability to speak can do. Each Chain gives the user a boost in something for a period of time, which later will need to be payed back with the opposite. For instance, Lute's grandmother knows a Chain that boosts Luck Stat of her entire family on at least a global scale for a few days, but the bad luck portion is so bad that most people wouldn't think it's worth it. The Self-Mastery chain makes the user much more aware of their body's movement and surroundings, but the bad half makes them unable to speak and stand up at the same time.
• Eyepatch of Power: By the time Lute and Alden meet for the second time, Lute has lost an eye. He has a prosthetic eye, but prefers to wear a patch most of the time because people have a tendency to stare at his fake eye anyway, so he feels that he may as well give them something more obvious to stare at.
• Fantastic Racism: Though the presence of Avowed and Artonans is mostly accepted on Earth, there are still notable amounts of tension between Avowed and non-Avowed humans, going both ways. Some humans fear and resent Avowed (as they are an extremely small portion of the planet's population), and sometimes even Artonans in general...
  • Super Supremacist: ...And some human Avowed genuinely think that if they weren't forced to be in Anesidora, they would be ruling Earth at this point. This gets to the point that many Anesidoran-born individuals tend to see the rest of the planet as basically another world they're not allowed to visit, look down upon non-Avowed (particularly those who are children of Avowed) and tend to call Avowed that awoke to their power in the rest of the planet 'globies'.
• Food Eats You: Many of the plants on Artona III are carnivorous. Alden is delighted to learn that some of them taste like meat.
• Genius Loci: Each inhabited planet and moon in the Artonan Empire has a sapient and omniscient spell that is in charge of monitoring chaos, selecting Avowed, and numerous other functions including communication, commerce, and teleportation. Avowed (and people with the right technology) can use it as Augmented Reality. Avowed can also communicate directly with the Contract, but it doesn't always respond. The kernel of Artona I is referred to as Mother, and seems to be regarded as a goddess.
• Gym Class Hell: Magical Physical Education is extremely intense and the students end up exhausted and bruised after every class, but since they are all attending the Hero program to learn how to use their powers no one complains much.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Alden takes a Class that is unsuited for hero work, and a Skill that no one has ever taken before (with a very unflattering name, "Let Me Take Your Luggage"), based on the vague hint of Gorgon, a mysterious alien. It is only after striking a deal with a powerful Artonan wizard that Alden discovers that his Skill is one of the most versatile ones there are, and that unlike most it has no level cap - Alden could effectively never take any other skill or spell ever again and still have an incredibly robust power to base a career around.
• Hegemonic Empire: The Artonan Empire has three culturally Artonan solar systems and many other Resource Worlds with sapient species who can become Avowed. Earth is only the latest to agree to the Contract after being warned about the danger of encroaching Chaos. War, disease, and natural disasters are largely gone from Earth, but humanity has been kept in the dark about things like how magic works, where chaos is coming from, or even why people are selected as Avowed.
• Hero Academy: Anesidora has a number of elite high schools and colleges for future superheroes. Alden's school has separate tracks for Avowed in the Hero program, arts, and sciences, although many classes include a mix of students.
• High-Class Glass: Joe's Contract interface is a monocle.
• I Do Not Drink Wine: Thanks to a magical geas, Alden is unable to eat animal products unless the animal gave him permission to eat it. Basically, he is a strict vegan.
• Improvised Weapon: Played With. Since anything Alden preserves is completely preserved, anything he can carry can be turned into a shield, including rope, umbrellas, water balloons, and people. However, since it's very conceptually linked to preservation (that is, it is about taking on someone else's burdens, not freezing something in time), he cannot effectively use the items as weapons. Even though the action of someone striking his preserved objects is very similar to the action of him using the preserved object to strike someone, conceptually they're completely different
• Inconvenient Summons: Most Avowed get at least a few days advance notice of when they will be summoned, but Rabbits get 48 seconds, and emergency summons get even less time. At one point Alden's cab driver has to pull over because she gets a summons mid-drive.
• Innocent Prodigy: Kibby has spent most of her childhood in a Mad Scientist Laboratory and has quite advanced knowledge of science and math for her age. She also is unaware of the consequences of teaching Alden magic.
• Intelligent Forest: Artona I has a huge forest of sapient - or at least sentient - trees that can move. It is hinted that the network of trees might be Mother, the kernel of the Artona I Contract.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Instructor Klein doesn't want Alden to be accepted to his school because, while Alden's skill could be useful for rescue work, it's an unknown skill and might reach its level cap at any time. Alden could take another skill, but there aren't any other known skills that could be equally useful. It's not Klein's fault that he doesn't know that Alden's skill doesn't have a level cap.
• Jerk Jock: Winston Reginald Heelfeather is an A-rank speedster who plans to become a superhero so he can get energy drink sponsorships and make tons of money. He has a Comically Lopsided Rivalry with a S-rank speedster who, in contrast, is friendly and doesn't seem to notice Winston at first. He resents anyone who takes up more of the spotlight than him.
• Le Parkour: Alden takes up parkour for fitness and to practice using his Trait.
• Like Brother and Sister: Alden and Kibby share this relationship after spending six months trapped in isolation together.
• Living Lie Detector: Some Sways have a Skill that lets them detect lies, and an empath can detect lies through fluctuations in a person's emotions.
• Mad Scientist: "Joe," the professor that Alden meets on his first job, has been recently demoted for doing shady experiments. He claims that the powers that be were fine with him doing it until he slept with the wrong politician's wife.
• Magikarp Power: A few students are accepted to hero school based on the potential of their powers more than their current abilities. For instance, one boy is a light Shaper who might eventually gain the ability to shoot laser beams or turn invisible, but currently can only glow slightly.
• Missing Reflection: The buildings in the Knight Rapport are made out of a shiny material that reflects the surrounding forest but not people.
• Nephewism: After his parents are killed, Alden is raised by his somewhat flighty Aunt.
• Alien Food Is Edible: Partially averted - some Artonan food is completely edible to humans, but others range from mildly to fatally toxic. Alden is forced to figure out which is which through trial and error while trapped on Moon Thegund.
• One-Paragraph Chapter: Chapter 61 has no title and is six words long.
• Pardon My Klingon: The Contract on Artona III refuses to translate swear words or topics it sees as sensitive.
• Powerful, but Incompetent: Jeffy the Aqua Brute has a useful Class and decent ranking, and is able to get into a top school for that reason... and no other.
• Powers as Programs: Since Classes are assigned at random, after a person is selected by the System they have 90 days to trade their Class with as many times as they like to get one that they actually want.
  • When affixing, or upon leveling up, Avowed can also get 'Spell Impressions', which effectively are preprogrammed spells. Alden only actually uses one after learning how to use spells the normal wizard way, and finds that he does not like spell impression, as they make him feel and look like his body is performing the spell on autopilot.
• Power Levels: At selection, each Avowed is given a rank, with F at the bottom, D second, C the most common, B at top 15%, A the most common for superheroes, and S at the top. There are theories for why a person is assigned a rank, but no one seems to know for sure. A person's overall rank and skill can level up over time, but most people don't break out of their starting rank. Most skills have a maximum level, which forces the Avowed to pick a new skill the next time they affix. This appears to limit the person's rank. People who go beyond S are referred to as Hyperboles, and are given the rank 1 instead.
• Power-Strain Blackout: If an Avowed uses their skills or spells too much they can temporarily burn it out. However, Rabbits in particular often collapse into catatonia instead. Fortunately they recover after a few hours of rest.
• Power Tattoo: Artonan Wizards can form magical contracts with people which are represented through magical tattoos. They are traditionally done on the face, though humans usually chose to put them under their clothing.
• Public Bathhouse Scene: Alden and Haoyu use a magical sauna after every MPE class to recover and do homework.
• Really 700 Years Old: Thanks to magical de-aging treatments, Artonans can live for centuries. These treatments are extremely expensive, but after almost 80 years since Earth signed the Contract some of the first generation of Avowed still appear to be in their 20s.
• Semantic Superpower: Alden's Skill allows him to preserve things entrusted to him, but can be used in ways that rely on his perception. For instance, if he is entrusted with an object he can preserve it and anything touching it, because it is part of a "stack." It will eventually allow him to carry any kind of "luggage", including intangible concepts.
• Shower of Angst: Alden has one when he realizes how much he loves doing magic, and how restrained he is by having so much of his Authority bound into his Skill.
• Shower Shy: The gym in hero school has individual showers, but Alden uses them to change clothes because he doesn't want people to see his Power Tattoo.
• The Six Stats: Each stat point adds 10% improvement to the species standard. The Avowed can pick some things for themselves each time they affix, but others are automatically assigned based on the Class and Skill choice. The avowed can also break down their free points however they want. For instance, given two free points they could put 0.25 into each stat. Each one can also be further broken down into specific parts of the body or for different parameters. Some stats, such as Processing, can't be implimented right at affixing and may take several months to come into full effect.
  • Sympathy for Magic appears to be a stat specifically given to Rabbits, and increases their ability to notice and interact with magical things.
  • Appeal is the equivalent to Charisma and can affect all parts of the body and even the psyche. It makes the person more beautiful, but also stronger and more graceful, because With Great Power Comes Great Hotness. It also makes the Avowed more empathetic, and with enough stat points put into it Appeal can start magically warping peoples' perception of the person.
  • Processing increases mental speed.
  • Dexterity, Stamina, Agility, Speed, and Strength are all fairly standard.
• Sizeshifter: Big'nLittle Snake is the superhero name of Morrison Waker, who can switch between the size of a large human with super strength and a tiny human with super speed.
• Slice of Life: The series is mostly about Alden's day-to-day life at work and school.
• Stern Teacher: Torsten Klein is a strict, no-nonsense teacher who values his students, but who disapproves of Alden being accepted into the school, but not because of him being biased against Rabbits or lower ranks. But because one Skill doesn't give you the tools needed to perform as the quality of a hero graduate Celena North aims to produce, along with there's no guarantee Alden could find another Skill suited for hero work, and the time and effort they spend on him could be spent on another student without such limitations.
• Stock Superpowers Index: There are many different Classes and subclasses, many of which fit in the superpowers index:
  • Brutes are the most common Class, and make up about a third of all Avowed. Sub-classes include Strength Brute, Dura Brute, Aqua Brute, Agility Brute, Speed Brute (Speedsters), Rubber Man or Sizeshifter Morph Brutes, Jump Brute, Vocal Brutes or Audial Brutes.
  • Meisters are specialized to use a specific tool, supplemented with magic. Many of these are weapons, such as Swords, Cudgles, or Bows, but not all tools are weapons. For instance, there are Meisters of Torch and Wrench, as well as various musical instruments. At S-rank musical instruments are usually used as weapons.
  • Shapers have magical control over a specific element, which are defined in Artonan terms and don't always make sense to humans. For instance, it includes human Elemental Powers such as air, ground, and water, but "ground" refers to the 'firmament of the planet that supports our life,' and can include things like concrete, but if it has been manipulated too much it becomes an Object, and is considered to be a different element. Other elements include Life, and Light. Notably it does not include ice manipulation, shooting lightning, or fire.
  • Adjuster of Reality/Adjusters choose a starter skill and usually several spell impressions that go with it. This basically allows them to determine their own subclass at affixation. After the initial choice, the System limits and streamlines the type of spells and skills they're offered in the future. These include gravity manipulation, ice, lightening, fire, and energy barriers. One character has abilities that let him read an object's history and then revert it to a previous state, which he uses to repair small objects, and he hopes his abilities will eventually develop him into a full Time Master.
  • Wrights build magical tools and weapons, which they can use themselves or sell. They can either have a general Wright Class or a more specialized one. For instance, around the time Alden is picking a Class there is a Bridge Wright up for trade.
  • Sways have psychic powers, and usually specialize as mind readers or manipulators. They are looked on with suspicion and fear by most people, so most Anesidorans know not to the class if possible, and to avoid picking skills or spells that could let them invade peoples' privacy. Variations include Compelling Voice, Living Lie Detector, and the ability to melt peoples' brains from a distance.
  • Healers heal, although they can't instantly heal injuries. C-ranks and above are gifted with extended lifespans. It's one of the most rare and lucrative Classes, so it almost never goes up for trade.
  • Rabbits are another rare class. They are the ultimate utility class and many are summoned often enough that they make a lot of money. Their name is an Anglicisation of ryeh-b't, which are small dragonlike creatures and the Artonan equivalent to dogs. It has the broadest range of Skills of any class, ranging from the ability to make magically delicious food to instantly make objects prettier to rearranging furniture. There are so many in fact, that even after almost 80 years not all of them have been chosen. In addition to Skills and Spell Impressions, Rabbits also get a Trait, which is an active affect that is usually only turned on while the Rabbit is using their skill. Alden's makes gravity weigh him down less as long as he is on Ground, but others include contaminant resistance, composure, and attention to detail.
  • Chainers have abilities that let them do Wordchains better, bestow them on others, and forcibly call in unpaid debts. See Equivalent Exchange.
  • Mourners are an ultrarare class who can remove bad emotions from people and change their own emotional state at will.
  • Uniques/U-Types are individuals who have completely unique abilities and are often selected much younger than any other Avowed for mysterious reasons. Unlike every other Class they can't trade their Class and affix as soon as they are selected. Known individuals include one who can talk to cats and has other cat-themed powers, an empath who can push his emotions onto others, a person who can phase through solid objects, another who turns her enemies into rainbow glitter, and one who can suck the lifeforce out of people.
• Superpower Lottery: Only 0.07% of Earth's population is selected by the Contract, and given a rank based on slightly unclear parameters. They are assigned a random Class based on what is needed by the Triplanets at the time, entirely at random. Classes can be traded until they are finalized, but a person's desired Class isn't always available.
• Super Registration Act: Humans who become Avowed are legally mandated to register at the nearest consulate, and ninety days after, their citizenship become legally transferred to Anesidora. Being forced to leave one's home and become mostly unable to leave Anesidora is noted to be the biggest hangup Avowed have about their state of being. It's also noted that this is only legally significant for humans - Artonans mostly summon Avowed based on their need, and do not usually pay attention to Earth legalities.
• Teleportation: The only means of travel between the Artonans' various solar systems, including Sol. Spaceships exist, but are only used within systems, and teleports are more common.
• Too Important to Walk: While trapped on Moon Thegund, Alden fantasizes about hiring people to carry him around in a palanquin.
• Torture Is Ineffective: Wizards can create contract tattoos between two people, including the ability to lock certain secrets from being repeated, even under torture.
• Translator Microbes: Avowed get an Augmented Reality through the Contract, which gives them subtitles for languages that they don't know. This is usually shown in the text with <brackets to denote translations>. This becomes a problem if the System isn't working for some reason and no one speaks the same languages.
• Weak, but Skilled: Alden's physical stats are low, but his Skill is highly flexible and gets more and more useful with practice.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Enforced. Due to the way the Contract is designed and its Avowed powers are handed out, a number of Avowed classes and powers are considered near-useless by humans - but only because the Artonans are deliberately a bit obtuse as to how valuable or useful certain powers are, and how they truly work. Gorgon notes at one point early in the narration that there's no such thing as weak powers, except situationally. A power that may seem weak on the surface when first obtained could be tremendously useful further down the line and in planets other than Earth.
• Whip Sword: Lexi's weapon is a Mind Writher, a Variable-Length Chain that he can extend and manipulate with his mind. He can use it to bind, cut, or stab. His brother accuses him of just wanting a Whip of Dominance.

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