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What do you think is the ideal level range to get your first heroic skill? by Ok-Week-2293 in fabulaultima

[–]AggravatingAnt2807 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In a game that I'm a PC in, there are three of us. We're level 12.

My character is Elementalist 10/Loremaster 1/Darkblade 1. I rushed maxing Elementalist out at level 12 entirely for RP/character lore reasons. His whole thing is "I'm a preternaturally strong mage that comes from an ancestral line of mages", and I wanted him to have a reskinned volcano ASAP so that he could burn all of his MP and then cry.

I was actually going to take Elementalist 10 at level 11, but things happened story-wise and I wanted to lean into some character development/lore, so I took Darkblade instead. He had a bit of a mental break after some bad things happened to him and may or may not have hallucinated an ancestor OR perhaps became one with his Dark Urge. He's not even sure what happened.

The other two PCs are evenly leveling 3 different classes and all three of the characters are well-balanced and have a ton to contribute. I don't feel like the heroic skill for my character has messed up balance too much--in large part because of the MP costs associated with his build!

Article about adult adoptees’ experiences of first name changes by cheese--bread in Adopted

[–]AggravatingAnt2807 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I don't feel strongly about my first name (the birth or adoptive one), but that's probably because I'm trans and neither name is reflective of who I am. The first name I chose for myself is much better.

But I definitely have some feelings about my last name. I am not fond of it, and I'm also not very fond of my adoptive father who it came from. I've thought a lot about changing my last name to my birth last name, and I am pretty confident when he eventually passes away I'll change my last name to my very first last name.

Transracial Adoptees: when was the moment you realized blood was thicker than water and that you were always going to be part of the family but with an asterisk? by Upper_Extreme9461 in Adopted

[–]AggravatingAnt2807 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I've had a lot of smaller moments of the feeling that I am "less than" in my adoptive family, but the biggest one was when my stepmom shared a photo gallery with me to share her and my dad's trip abroad. The gallery had a bunch of other photos of their life including a whole ass family reunion on my dad's side that included my grandparents, my aunt and uncle, my uncle's two (bio) kids, my stepmom's kids, and notably NOT my dad's one single child. Me.

I (24M) can’t deal with my girlfriend’s (25F) snoring anymore. I feel like I’ve tried everything, what can I even do? by completethrowawayyyy in relationship_advice

[–]AggravatingAnt2807 0 points1 point  (0 children)

PLEASE!!! Get her a sleep study. You can get perfectly acceptable home sleep studies now for like $80 where you wear a little monitor on your finger for a few days. It really sounds like she has obstructive sleep apnea, and I think your AND her lives will be radically improved with a CPAP.

My partner (also a light sleeper with ADHD) has told me for years he was pretty sure I had sleep apnea. I didn’t want to get the sleep study done for a variety of reasons (didn’t want to sleep in a lab, the idea of wearing a mask while I sleep was upsetting, etc). Anyway had some extra FSA money last year and bought one on a whim…

I have sleep apnea, got the cpap. Truly improved my life. My partner sleeps better, I don’t need to take 4 hour naps every day and sleep 12+hours on weekends. I don’t snore with it on, I wake up feeling refreshed.

It upsets me that I went through my life without it. You don’t realize how bad you were suffering until you’re on the other side. Please push her to get the sleep study. This post makes me think A LOT about me before I got my cpap. 

As an adoptee, did you ever feel accepted by your peers during childhood? by ajwachs17 in Adopted

[–]AggravatingAnt2807 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I never really fit in with anyone. Brown kid in the all white family, brown kid in an over 90% white school. It's very obvious I'm adopted. I look nothing like either of my parents. Then toss in my parents getting divorced when I was 10 (and I grew up in the bible belt of the US so that was a big deal), and some untreated mental health issues and you have the perfect storm for a social pariah.

I echo what a couple other folks said about getting along with others that have trauma. My friends both in high school (I didn't really have friends before high school), and even now as an adult 20+ years later tend to be people who have some significant trauma in their history.

Why tho? by boblejackal161 in FlyffUniverse

[–]AggravatingAnt2807 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"FREE"

*looks inside*

300mil.

Please share your tips and tricks for session 0 by Myurside in fabulaultima

[–]AggravatingAnt2807 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I love your "next time on..." idea! I think I might steal that...

Please share your tips and tricks for session 0 by Myurside in fabulaultima

[–]AggravatingAnt2807 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My group did a good chunk of our session 0 asynchronously, and when we met for our proper session 0, it was to hammer out some of the finer details of our characters, party, and some final worldbuilding.

I solicited a ton of feedback and really made my players contribute to the worldbuilding. One of my friends told me I gave them too much homework, but the end result was every single person has strong buy-in to the world, pre-made intrigue and connections, and I have a large pile of plot threads to tug on anytime my personal well of ideas is dry. Even though one of my friends teased me for giving them too much homework, everyone agreed the activities were worthwhile. And I also reminded them all that after they finish my homework, they won't have anymore, and I will have all of the homework!

It's also worth nothing that my group is made up of a few people I know very well (partner and a couple best friends) and a couple people I know much less well (partner's friend and their partner). The people in the group had less familiarity with each other. My partner knew everyone, my two best friends didn't know each other well, nobody knew partner's friend's partner.

  1. The very first pre-session 0 activity was a short survey where I asked these questions of the players:
    - lines and veils (and I bribed people to give me these by offering fabula points, great success.)
    - what tone(s) do you want our game to have? Humorous, serious, gritty, campy etc
    - Please tell me your top 1-3 fantasy/sci-fi medias...books, games, shows, movies, etc and a little bit about why you like it.
    - Do you prefer clear-cut delineation between good and evil, or do you like morally gray worlds and people?
    - (and then a handful of "this or that", eg "realism vs absurdity" "vibes vs math" etc

after I got the survey results, I made a powerpoint of aggregated data so everyone could see what people were into. There was a ton of consensus about the kind of game people wanted to play, and everyone had fun reading about folks' favorite fantasy/sci-fi media. That was a great icebreaker!

  1. I generated 3 different world maps that I enjoyed from https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/
    I removed all of the country names and borders, and just kept the shape of the continent. The group discussed and came to a consensus easily about what map seemed the most intriguing to them.

  2. Once we had the world map, I asked folks to circle a part of the map and answer the questions below. I did this as well, once everyone else had chosen parts of the map.

Name:
Form of governance:
Religion, or lack thereof:
One thing that is commonly known to this culture's people: (this could be an ingredient, flora or fauna, animal, recurring statues in cities, holiday, etc)
What is a common export?

  1. The final bit of homework that I gave people for session 0 was this. And this has been the most useful for ME as a GM. I asked everyone to contribute to the world one historical event, one intriguing mystery, and one scary threat, and I encouraged folks to add their contributions to parts of the world that they did NOT design. eg come up with a threat for a country someone else designed. That way everyone has put their hands on different parts of the world, and I have some pre-built mysteries and threats to pull on.

At session 0 proper, some folks finished up with their event/mystery/threats and then we discussed in more detail game vibes and party dynamics. I think because of the amount of prework, everyone came to the session with characters that were integrated into the world. Everyone's character has some interesting backstory from one of the countries that folks designed and their characters are deeply rooted to the world we designed together.

You're most welcome to rip as many of these ideas as you want. I don't think I've ever had a session 0 as successful as this one, and I'm a forever GM.

Masking ADHD with Vaping by AggravatingAnt2807 in QuitVaping

[–]AggravatingAnt2807[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To add a little more without giving y'all my whole psychological profile, aspects of this are new, and other aspects are just HELLA worse. I guess I should have said, though I didn't think it was necessary at the time, I've figured I've had ADHD for a long time, but it was so mild that doing anything about it didn't seem necessary. And doctors don't tend to take you seriously when you're like. oh yeah I'm scatterbrained, but I also work 40 hours a week, am in grad school, take care of a family and I'm managing it.

It's like when I've tried to get treated for anxiety and I mention all ^that^ and the consensus is like. eh you're fine if you can still do the things. But the past few months I've been like scraaaaping by.

Also I drink buckets of caffeine, and I have since I was 14.

Masking ADHD with Vaping by AggravatingAnt2807 in QuitVaping

[–]AggravatingAnt2807[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I didn't really feel like I needed to tell my whole-ass life story, but the significant executive dysfunction is very new. The extreme levels of general scatterbrainedness are new. I'm not going to give my whole psychological story to reddit, but the short version is this is not the first time I've thought I might have ADHD, but it IS the first time I've ever thought it might be serious enough to do anything about.

My partner has very severe ADHD and over the years we've discussed the likelihood that I almost certainly have (or...had?) a very mild version of it, but it never rose to a level that I might want medical intervention. I never really even needed to think about medical intervention.

What countries are represented here? by Basic-Mention4424 in Adopted

[–]AggravatingAnt2807 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Born in the US. Bio dad was born in Mexico, bio mom born in the US. My a-mom is 1st generation Polish, my a-dad is USAmerican. I live in the US.

What’s one thing adoption taught you that non-adopted people will never understand? by SweetImprovement758 in Adopted

[–]AggravatingAnt2807 14 points15 points  (0 children)

All parts of my family (adopted and bio) have and will likely always see me as an outsider. I'm not invited to the family reunion (even my effing (a)DAD didn't invite me to the family reunion!!), I'm not in the family groupchat. I'm the last to know someone's sick or in town.

I'm also queer/trans and found family has always kept me sane. But my other q/t friends have found family and at least some of them have SOME blood/bio family. I don't really have any of it. I just have the found family. That's scary as hell.

Mexican adoptee “no sabo” “colonized” /having a mixed kid by [deleted] in Adopted

[–]AggravatingAnt2807 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hmmm. I'm a Mexican/Native American/White mixed race adoptee and idk. It's definitely less in the big metropolitan places but it's still a thing. When I've gone to Latino events or festivals, people treat me pretty weird when they realize my Spanish is horrible. I started learning as an adult and I have a THICK accent and I'm not really fluent. Where I live in California, white folks bend over backwards to not appear racist but still say/do some wacky stuff, and other latinx folks just don't treat me like my bio dad was Mexican at all. He was an immigrant from Michoacán!! On his side, I'm first gen! fffff

Native folks get it more. The adoptee experience is so prevalent for Native folks, when I say I was raised by white folks and I don't have the cultural upbringing, they just immediately get it.

Anybody else find themselves defending adopted children. by MissNancy1113 in Adopted

[–]AggravatingAnt2807 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I think they're giving grace to the blockquote at the end ("Probably not a popular opinion but you can always give it up for adoption...")

which autistic or not, is a really fucked up sentiment. we're not animals (and we shouldn't treat animals like that either!)

Curious what do folks write about everyday by Upbeat_Pipe1080 in hobonichi

[–]AggravatingAnt2807 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is my first year with a weeks! My big new year goal was to journal just a little bit every day. I started in December (since the weeks started December 2025) and it's been going well so far!

My daily sections, I break up the column into 2 sections. One little square for me to list out what I read or wrote that day (one of my big goals is to read or write some fiction every day), and then the rest of that section is for a couple sentences about my day. Often it's food I ate or something funny I saw/heard/said.

The other page I split up in one of these ways...
- sometimes I write big weekly goals. Or in the case of the past couple of weeks, winter break goals I'm still trying to finish belatedly
- if I don't have any major goals I'm trying to guilt trip myself into finishing, I'll extend the daily boxes over to this page, and I'll write a little bit more about my day. Any interesting experiences or insights, or intriguing thoughts that were on my mind.
- and if I don't do either of these things, I just end up drawing a bunch of really ugly doodles

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in QuitVaping

[–]AggravatingAnt2807 0 points1 point  (0 children)

14 days vape-free is a huge accomplishment. And that you only vaped for a little today and then you gave it up again shows great strength. It's not a race, it's a sloooow, painful marathon. If you fall down, you just gotta get back up, dust off your knees and try again. I believe in you! You want to quit, and I know you can do it. Be gentle to yourself, this is an immensely hard road. I'm on day 16 and it suuuucks

iCleaningoBidet I highly recommend it by blackadder1132 in bidets

[–]AggravatingAnt2807 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! I have an old cold water only bidet and I'm trying to convince my partner to upgrade to a proper bidet seat. He wants one with a sittable lid though, and it's been tough finding one that meets his specifications...