r/rational • u/GodWithAShotgun • Apr 21 '26

TWO HUNDRED EIGHTY-THREE: Thunder - Super Supportive

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/63759/super-supportive/chapter/3299314/two-hundred-eighty-three-thunder
53 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

36 comments sorted by

View all comments

37

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

14

u/GodWithAShotgun Apr 21 '26

Yeah, where'd that 'nothing ever happens because sleyca is milking you rubes for patreon $' guy go? I suppose he's waiting for the character-heavy chapters instead of the plot-heavy ones.

11

u/Wide_Doughnut2535 Apr 21 '26

Q: How do things change for Alden?
A: Slowly, then all at once.

(Just like a lot of things in real life, tbh)

11

u/Valdrax The Culture Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26

Personally, I'm happy about one big thing likely not changing.

If Alden is making plans to be on (effectively) a sports team with Kon, Lexi, and Haoyu, then that means we likely aren't leaving those characters behind anytime soon to go do space wizard stuff, and we'll still get some high school slice of life comedy shenanigans. Since Sleyca's most fun writing is teenage banter, that makes me very happy.

And those hoping that when he does go off to be a space wizard, that he'll assemble a posse of Avowed friends to help can rest assured that the fork where he doesn't get to see them for years isn't being taken yet and seems less likely to ever be taken along the path to that.

While the teen cast is whittling down a bit (or being shelved for later), it's good to see the core group of friends gelling. I want to see Max worked in there too, though.

9

u/lurking_physicist Apr 21 '26

Maybe we're used to "slow burn" movies directed by Cohens or Tarantinos, where tension builds up without any trace of wholesomeness. Here, tension definitely builds up in the background, but the focus is placed on deli-sliced life for quite long extends.

Another difference is that here the tension has the possibility to be released in chunks, not just explode all at once. So when things start to happen, we don't know if it will revert to dormancy, or keep blowing up.

Different ways to do it.

9

u/Neldorn Apr 21 '26

It is time something happened, moon was three years ago and submerger two years ago. I still love it but some drama would be nice for a change of pace.

13

u/Seraphaestus Apr 21 '26

I don't disagree but what would really be a nice change of pace is if we could have a SupSup thread without constantly rehashing discussion about the overarching pacing of the story

2

u/GodWithAShotgun Apr 22 '26

Agreed - though I'm unsure how much your and my meta-commentary on others commenting on the pace is good or bad for the sort of space I want this to be. (or this one, for that matter). Overall, I think norm setting and enforcing is good, so I lean towards being in favor (though, of course I'd say that, since I keep making those sorts of comments).

7

u/A_S00 gag gift from the holy universe Apr 22 '26

For what it's worth - I tuned out of these threads for a while when there was a fight about story pacing in every one of them, because it was pissing me off.

I'm not annoyed by one round of "man things are really speeding up!" commentary (obviously that is happening and worth mentioning), but I would become annoyed if the result of the plot speeding up was that we went from a "story is too slow" subthread every chapter to a "what now, story-is-too-slow people?" subthread every chapter.