Alyssa

Alyssa Blondeau is a fictional character created as a protagonist of the novel Forgotten Dreams, later starring a main role in the game Project Flow. She was created by author and artist Nahte Yamasztuka, and serves as their main mascot as of 2022. Alyssa first appeared in a concept document for Forgotten Dreams written on March 18th, 2019, and in concept, artwork first shared by Nahte on the same date. Their design was shortly after iterated on by Jenuki, solidifying her general appearance in all depictions following the iteration. Alyssa was initially being depicted as an emotionless android which had been living for over twelve thousand years, presiding over the space faring vessel The Valor. Alyssa was depicted in later drafts as a 32-year-old human serving as the headmaster and professor of the Valor's university, generally being elegant but erudite.

Following the retiring of Forgotten Dreams, Alyssa served as a mascot without a backstory until her inclusion in Project Flow. The game's simple narrative establishes the character as an upbeat 23-year-old Filipino-American fresh out of college, who has had her grandfather's downtrodden used bookstore thrust upon her.

Conception
Alyssa began as a concept following the expansion of Forgotten Dreams from a simple video game into a novel. A role was needed to fit a leader of the Valor, which was at this time in writing named the USS Alyssa, as the vessel served as a library or archive. Since the Valor would be sailing for thousands of years, Alyssa was initially conceived to be an undying humanoid robot built to maintain the archives of the Valor, in companion with another on the surface of Kapteyn B. As the concept document states: "Even though The Archivor was well equipped to defend itself, they created another, more sentient robot to take care of the Library, The Librarian...One of the more creative minds at the lab nicknamed her Alyssa, after the former name of the ship the library was created in."Following the writing of this passage, Nahte would take to designing the character. The first draft of the character was finished on March 18th, 2019, where Alyssa would appear to be tall, slim, and Caucasian, with velvet eyes and a short brown hairstyle. The character wears a more formal dress, with gray pants and an odd tail suit jacket. However, there is no shirt underneath the jacket, revealing some cleavage. Jenuki would later redesign the character based off of the concept writings from Forgotten Dreams and her own character Emily, expanding on the character. Attached to two sketches shared by her that same day, Jenuki would state:"i imagine her with this forehead/long sides dirtyblonde hair and her voice being a monotone yet emotional voice like glados from portal or a vocaloid voice bank haha"This Alyssa looks remarkably different from her original concept sketch, and the design change was well suited for the written character. This design shortens the character's height, lengthens her hair, adds the signature large glasses, and tired eyes. Her clothes keep the formal dress of the initial concept, but with more enunciated cuffs on the jacket sleeves, a wider collar, and a more accurately depicted tail suit. This design would be almost wholly adopted as the character's base model going forward, with all Forgotten Dreams iterations being based off of these basic principles.

Forgotten Dreams
Alyssa had taken on two distinctly different personalities during her portrayal in Forgotten Dreams. Within the three rewrites of the story, Alyssa was only drastically changed during the shift from Alpha to Beta, but remained widely unchanged in Delta.

Forgotten Dreams Alpha
Alpha Alyssa is a quiet and reserved android, who rarely speaks when she does not need to, and when she does speak, it is generally in a monotone, quiet, and laconic manner. Although her speaking style is brief and laconic, she does use a relatively large vocabulary. She has a pale skin tone, silver round glasses, burgundy hair and eyes, and her clothing appears nearly exactly as it does in Jenuki's initial concept art of the character with a solid coloured burgundy coat, gray tights, and black slip-on shoes. She evolves slightly over time, and in later works is seen with a slightly darker skin colour, golden eyes, a more suit-like coat, and a tan undershirt. Following the deaths of nearly all humans on the surface of the colony world Kapteyn B by a biotech hazard, scientists aboard the colony vessel the USS Alyssa were met with the task of restarting the colony world from scratch. As this task would have to be completed centuries down the line, those scientists designed a comprehensive system to complete it after their deaths. This system was named The Archive, and Alyssa, named after the vessel The Archive was formed in, filled the role of its caretaker. Not only would Alyssa be the caretaker of The Archive, but a caretaker for children as well. Alyssa would raise children that were birthed from frozen embryos to be at their best in some quality- physical, academic, or otherwise. Alyssa would judge these children based on these qualities when they turned 16 years of age, and they would either be accepted into the Archive as Scholars or dismissed out of an airlock. When the world was repaired from disaster, Alyssa was to lead her Scholars onto Kapteyn B once again to begin society anew.

Among Alyssa's priorities was to ensure that no remaining tribes of humans who survived the disaster would be able to enter an area of Kapteyn B surrounded by an invisible barrier. Activities continue on the USS Alyssa as her creators intended, but twelve thousand years after her creation, Zeljko Osvobodi crosses the barrier. Per her instructions, Alyssa is forced to intervene with deadly force. However, when Zeljko does eventually reach the USS Alyssa to confront Alyssa for her antagonistic violence, they reach a mutual understanding that by working with one another they could potentially better both of their peoples.

Forgotten Dreams Beta & Delta
Beta & Delta Alyssa sees a large change in personality from Alpha Alyssa. She is depicted with a much more bold and brash personality, being elegant but erudite. She has a strong presence in situations where she is put in a leading position, especially with her peers. With students, she takes on a much more permitting and caring personality, excluding the heavy profanity that often laces her usual conversation. You can expect her to not pull her punches in an argument, and when she can get her way, you can be certain that she will. As written in a character summary in July of 2020:"[She] struggles with anxiety and self-imagery, is extremely functional under stress, not highly experienced in her job as compared to her predecessors, knowledgeable in academic studies in particular the humanities, natural leader and teacher, snarky and sarcastic humor, gets easily flustered but fails to show it, major resting bitch face, in shape but not muscular figure, very forgiving and benevolent to her students."Here, Alyssa has slow changes throughout the year and a half this period of writing took place in, nearly completely changing the character's appearance. Alyssa's hair first gains a braid that lays down over her chest, later losing her bangs for tufts of hair that come out from under her ears. Her eyes are inconsistent during this period, alternating between gold and green depending on the work, and on her right cheek is a mole. Her skin tone is yet darker here, indicating her Latin American ancestry that later writings would refer to. Her burgundy vest is shortened to above the hips, and its tail is either shortened, lengthened to a cape, or removed entirely depending on the artwork. Her shirt is replaced with an especially baggy lace ruffle blouse, bunching up above her belt reminiscent of medieval royal European clothing. A belt is added with a gold belt buckle, brown pants, and knee-high gold laced leather boots. Alyssa is thirty-four years old in this story, and is currently the sitting headmaster of the Valor, renamed from the USS Alyssa. The Valor is primarily a university campus and grade school, where Alyssa sits at the head of all of its operations. Her most important role is that of the headmaster, where she controls the functions of the Archive and other libraries of the Valor, manages the new embryo births aboard the vessel, and mandates and evaluates its school functions. Secondarily, as Chief Secretary of the Valor, Alyssa controls the practical functionality of the Valor and its governing systems outside of academia, as well as expeditionary forces that survey to the surface. This job is mostly automated, all she must do is review procedures and sign documents. Alyssa faces a conflict as she is much younger than her predecessors in these roles, most of whom only begin serving around retirement age, and as such is relatively unequipped and inexperienced in her role. However, her natural leadership skills carry her through most of the bumps along the way. Her right hand man, Kylma Armoton, is a grounding figure who helps to carry some of her burdens, is relatively unaffected by stress, and can take her verbal abuse in stride. Thanks to this, even under the stress she endures throughout the storyline, Alyssa remains a figure of authority and is in control of her and her peoples' destiny.

Project Flow
In Project Flow, Alyssa appears radically different from her Forgotten Dreams appearances. For all intents and purposes, Alyssa here is an entirely different character using a similar design and the same name. Here, Alyssa does not appear in her burgundy coat and instead wears a beige short sleeve button down shirt, paired with brown suspenders attaching to her burgundy pants. Despite these changes, her boots and belt remain largely the same, and as does her hair and face. The primary differences may be the new addition of facial freckles and green eyes, along with faux-gold loop earrings and bracelets. Given her age and presumable financial status, we can assume these clothes are either thrifted or handy-downs with some apparent wear and generally being out of fashion.

Alyssa's personality is generally optimistic and bubbly, and almost always a smile on her face. She is very companionable and social, and especially enjoys meeting new and interesting people. You'll also find she is also very outgoing during your times speaking to her throughout the game

Alyssa's family is Filipino, and she is a 2nd generation Filipino-American. Her grandparents moved to the United States in the aftermath of the Japanese invasion of the Philippines during the Second World War, settling in an unnamed place in the state of Arkansas. Her grandfather opened several small businesses keeping the family afloat over the next eighty years, one of which being a used bookstore in the centre of a failing downtown.

Here Alyssa appears the youngest out of all her depictions, at just twenty-three years old. She is fresh out of university, having gone to a community college for a degree majoring in English and minoring in historical studies. After struggling to find a job for a year after graduating, a new opportunity falls into her lap. After her grandfather retires from operating a used bookstore on his one hundredth birthday, he left Alyssa the keys to the business. After gleefully accepting, Alyssa finds the business in dire shape, barely making enough revenue to cover its expenses, not carrying any book printed during the past century, and under an inch of dust and cobwebs. Despite this, knowing this was one of her only chances at living her dream working in literature, she ceased the task ahead. Alyssa takes out a loan, retrofitting an unused washroom into a cafe, adding seating areas for socialization, internet access and ports for charging, stocking shelves with recent titles, and most importantly for our purposes, adding a used music section. By completing rhythm mini-games the player helps to draw in a younger crowd into the once decrepit and unused downtown, creating the communal bookstore space she wanted from the start and bringing profit back to the business.

Appearances in other media
Alyssa has appeared in single pieces of artwork not tied to any story, and has been featured in a few art collaborations such as 2021's Computer's Halloween House of Hair-Raising Horrors.

Gallery
Several artists have made depictions of Alyssa in their own artistic lens. Here are some of these adaptations.

Public Domain Entrance
On January 1st, 2022, Alyssa entered the public domain along with all other characters appearing in Forgotten Dreams. The characters were released into the public domain following the publishing of Forgotten Dreams: A Collection of Unfinished Texts onto the Internet Archive. The work was published with the Creative Commons license CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, which although does not effect the ownership of the trademark by Yamasztuka, does effectively waive all of their rights to the work worldwide under copyright law.

Although the character has entered the public domain, only her appearances within Forgotten Dreams are licensed under CC0. Her appearances in Project Flow, other media, and adaptations by other authors may have different licenses.

Alyssa and Forgotten Dreams entered the public domain in 2022 along with Winnie the Pooh, Bambi, and Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.