User:T'Mar
At a Glance
Name: Melanie (aka Mel)
Location: Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA
Age: 29
Occupation: HR Representative & Grad Student
Hobbies: Orchestra, Retro Gaming, 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 Metro 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. (For a video of me in high school band at VBODA Click Here and to see my band be the very first band to ever perform at the Walt Disney World Disney Honors Click Here GO MIGHTY VIKING BAND!) I have a BSBA in Management with a concentration in Human Resource Management and I was accepted into grad school at the beginning of 2014 where I'm now working on getting an MBA in HR. Currently I work in Human Resources, acting as the interim HR Supervisor and the HR Rep at a large manufacturing company. I have been vegetarian for 5 years and was vegan for 3, which resulted in much joking from my friends on the Apollo. When I am not working at my full time job, I am always hanging out with my husband who happens to be my best friend.
Those who know me, whether in RL or in OOC chats, know that I have a strange (to put it nicely) 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 usually end up back to my red hair, though.
CURRENT HAIR COLOR: Cherry Brown!! (check back as it's always changing!)
Sometimes I enjoy making people uncomfortable. I have no idea where this comes from, but I find it highly amusing. I typically do this by saying slightly inappropriate things and seeing how people react.
While I tend to read a lot of sci-fi/fantasy or business books, currently I am reading "Psycho". I do wish I had more time to read, but as of late, most of my reading has been limited to reading posts. I am also attempting to write a story for my own leisure (Fun fact- part of my inspiration to join the fleet was to increase my typing speeds again. The last time I posted on a ship I was typing well over 100 wpm and I had been down to 40 wpm. I'm now about 70 wpm, so I am on my way!)
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 Cavalry- formerly part of the BravoFleet) 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...
My Characters
Current Playing Characters
- Cmdr. Sarah Mason - USS Constitution
Current NPCs
- PNPC Lt. (JG) Loleh Rejock
- PNPC Lt. Katelynn Meyer
- PNPC Ens. Sarai Porter
- Cmdr. T'Mar - USS Constitution
Former Characters
- MSNPC Aida Midasti- Town Healer on Planet Eridea
- MSNPC Commander Koval- Rogue Klingon extraordinaire
- MSNPC Lt.Cmdr. Sarah Mason
OOC Contributions
- Podcast Team Contributing member/Co-host; 9/28/2012 to present, Co-Facilitator; 12/1/2014- 3/2015. Facilitator; 3/2015- 8/2015. Co-Facilitator; 8/2015-9/2015.
- UFOP History Team Contributing member & Co-facilitator; 4/4/2013 to present
- USS Gemini Newsletter Team Initial Facilitator and contributing member; 11/2014- 12/2014 when the project was ended
- USS Apollo Mentor; 7/30/2013 to 2/2014
- USS Gemini Mentor & Facilitator; 2/2014- 7/2015
- USS Gemini Chat Facilitator; 2/2014- 3/2015
- Top Sims Contest Judge USS Apollo representative; 9/1/2013 to 2/2014
- Publicity Team Committee member/occasional contributing member; 7/28/2014- present
- Training Operations Team Trainer/Member; 10/9/2013- present
- My Character: Jaina Webb
- Newsies Team Interviewee
- Lower Decks interview: Found Here
Game Goals
My main goal for T'Mar was to become a Captain of a ship. In the long term, I still intend to do this, although with the recent change of characters I have not decided if T'Mar will be at the comm. I intend to remain XO until I can move up as CO. 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. This also means I can focus on participating in more OOC activities to help the community as well. While I had to step back from the XO role, I have now been able to focus more on facilitating OOC groups which is a lot of fun for me.
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. So far this indecisiveness has shown through her by making her take more and more risks. At some point I will have to make a decision and I think that time is coming soon.