User:T'Mar

At a Glance

Name: Melanie (aka Mel)

Location: Huntsville, Alabama, USA

Age: 26

Occupation: Staffing Professional

Hobbies: Retro Gaming, Volunteering, TableTop hangouts, Vegan Cooking, Yoga, Pilates, Reading

Joined UFOP: August 2012

About Me

Me at Busch Gardens with some friends

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. 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 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

• Lt.Cmdr. T'Mar - USS Apollo

Current NPCs

• PNPC Lt. (JG) Loleh Rejock
• MSNPC Aida Midasti

OOC Contributions

• Podcast Team Contributing member; 9/28/2012 to present
  • Guest Host appearances:
    • UFOP: Starbase 118 Podcast: Episode 2390-1
    • UFOP: StarBase 118 Podcast: Episode 2390-4
• UFOP History Team Contributing member; 4/4/2013 to present
• USS Apollo Mentor; 7/30/2013 to present
• Top Sims Contest Judge USS Apollo representative; 9/1/2013 to present
• Newsies Team
  • Lower Decks interview: Found Here

IC Goals

It is my goal to have T'Mar continue rising up the ranks. I have made Lieutenant Commander which was my main goal. I would also like to make 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.