User:T'Mar

At a Glance

Name: Melanie (aka Mel)

Location: Huntsville, AL

Age: 25

Occupation: Staffing Professional

Hobbies: Playing old video games, Volunteering, TableTop hangouts, Vegan Cooking, Yoga, Pilates, Reading

Joined UFOP: August 2012

About Me

Generic Information

Here's where I guess I get to tell you all more about me. In case you were curious or something. I was born and raised in the DC area. My dad brought me up with Star Trek so I have been watching since I can remember. I also enjoy writing. My first college degree was in Liberal Arts; I studied Poetry and Music before switching over to Business. Now I work in Human Resources, specifically specializing in Staffing and Employee relations. Basically I'm the person who does the hiring, the firing, and the babysitting between those two points. I have been veg for 1 1/2 years, which has resulted in much joking from my friends on the Apollo. Because I work in a stressful industry, I am big on maintaining a healthy lifestyle. I enjoy practicing Hot Yoga throughout the week to get a great workout while relieving stress. When I am not working at my full time job or working out, I am also in the process of opening up a business with my best friend. I also do quite a bit of volunteer work whenever possible because I believe in giving back. Those who know me, whether in RL or in OOC chats, know that I have a strange sense of humor, which is a genetic trait apparently because everyone on the one side of my family has the very same sense of humor. Those who know me in RL also know that I have a strange addiction to dying my hair. Most of my friends have never seen my natural hair color. That is an extremely sad fact. I always end up back to my red hair, though. Sometimes I enjoy making people uncomfortable. I have no idea where this comes from, but I find it highly amusing. While I tend to read a lot of sci-fi/fantasy or business books, currently I am reading "Little House: The First Five Novels" (I am on the first of the five, which is "Little House in the Big Woods").

My History with Gaming

I have been big on gaming since I was a kid. Growing up, my friends and I created the equivalent of what is now known as LARPing. We each had our own characters and we would make up quests that we would play out. From there I got into video games. I am a Nintendo-girl myself, so I played a lot of Zelda, DK, Mario, etc. and I never really moved on from there. I still play the old school games instead of the newer ones, although I love COD. I dabble with computer games, but I typically would play on my friends computers and not my own (system requirement issues, ftl). I also have a Table Top gaming group now as well.

Back in the 90s, on of my Trekker friends told me about this thing called a "PBeM" for Star Trek. Soon after I was an addict. I was on three different ships at one point (fun fact: one of the characters was named T'Mar and had striking similarities to my current character, although she was not Betazoid). I was a Captain on one of the ships, however, the ships soon reached the common fate for many of those ships: one by one the members started leaving and soon there was not enough to keep the ships going. In the early 2000s, one of the ships (the USS Calvary) attempted a comeback and it gave me a taste for the simming world once more, but about a year later it had reached the same fate again. Despite my desire to play with that group that had become like family, I knew a third attempt would never happen. Around that point I was in high school anyways and switched over to gaming and shenanigans with my friends. The PBeM world quickly faded away as I began growing up and thinking about my future.

Fast forward to the summer of 2012. I was working at two different internships, both of which had a lot of down time, due to being unpaid work. While I was working I realized that my typing was much slower than the days where I was posting on three ships for fun (I averaged well over 100wpm back then). It started as an idea to help me increase typing speed, but I quickly realized I missed the action and even more, the friends that came with PBeMs. A quick google search brought me to UFOP and without taking any time to talk myself out of it, I signed up. There would be no going back from there...

Current Playing Characters

Lt. T'Mar - USS Apollo

Current PNPCs

Lt. (JG) Rejock,_Loleh

OOC groups

Podcast_Team_Members Contributing member and guest host

Guest Host appearances:

UFOP: Starbase 118 Podcast - Episode 2390-1

UFOP: StarBase 118 Podcast: Episode 2390-4

UFOP History Team Contributing member

IC Goals

It is my goal to have T'Mar continue rising up the ranks. I would like to at least make Lt. Commander and XO, however I'd like to end up at Commander and settle there for awhile before eventually taking on the role of Captain. When I started simming with this group, I had much more time to invest due to my job at the time having tons of times I could write. For a short while there, I was in a position that would not even allow me to check my email at lunch, and I was working about 50+ hours a week. This put me behind on my path to promotion, but I am now in a position where I can write during the day on my break and I am back on the right track to meet my goals.

I also want to delve more into T'Mar's internal conflict with the battle over logic or empathy. Vulcan or Betazoid. I have yet to decide if she will choose to accept her emotions, but that is the fun of writing for her.

If my work/life schedule will allow it, I would love to have Loleh become a secondary character and develop her more, although I have not put much thought into her inner workings like I have with T'Mar. It would be fun to play a character that I could wing it with and not have the constraints of suppressing emotions. Interestingly enough, I know more about Loleh's childhood than T'Mar's. I am currently working on developing more of a backstory for T'Mar so I can give her more depth, but also to include in the wiki so others can grasp her at least OOC.