LORE

The story of an idea and of a personal philosophy.

Welcome to you, dear readers.

Before I talk to you about circles, I want to introduce myself. Most of you only know me by my handle: WON3A.

My name is Sylvain, I am 27 years old and I am the father of a little boy who is 2. I am an ambulance worker, with a strong interest in people and in psychology.

I am passionate about technology, video games, art, music and everything that has to do, closely or remotely, with the future. I am one of those who see AI as an exceptional tool. But for art, sorry, that's a hard no lol. Everything you will see in Virtuous Circle is drawn by hand, pixel by pixel. For me, art has to go through a human hand and its thought.

I am someone gentle and kind, with an enthusiasm that often overflows. Sometimes a little too much, you will notice it quickly lmaooo.

And yet… Bad mood activated.

My story has not always been light.

And if I am telling it to you, it is because without it, Virtuous Circle would not exist.

The first circles

I had a complicated childhood. A complicated life.

I was born into a modest family living in a small countryside village in France.

I am the eldest, with one sister and two little brothers. We are all 3 years apart.

My parents were constantly in conflict. We were four children. Then, on a December 24th, my father attempted suicide.

The result: a coma lasting several months. When he woke up, he was hemiplegic, with significant brain damage.

At 14, you really understand what is happening around you. And at that age, I was already facing the harsh reality of human psychology, and the weakness we can have in the face of deep distress.

Love is something powerful. But it can also push us to do reckless things.

I want to make one thing clear: depression is an illness that must be taken seriously. If you are facing it, talk about it with the people around you.

I quickly saw many psychologists. It gave me an ability that I consider precious today: talking easily about what I feel and what I have been through. Speaking up lets you hear out loud what the brain does not want to hear quietly.

For a long time, I lived with my paternal grandmother, who had taken my father in after his disability. At 17, the tension with my mother had become so bad that I went to live with her for good.

As I grew up, I started spending time with toxic people. I sank into hash, weed and alcohol.

Alcohol did not only make me forget my problems. It made me forget my nights out. Every night ended in a blackout, and the next day, shame overwhelmed me when my "friends" told me what had happened. Being the butt of the joke every single time is a real ordeal.

The only solution I found to get out of it was sport and joining the army. I had to cut myself off from all those gears that were pulling me down. The army and sport put me back on the right path.

December 24, 2020

But I was caught up by something far more violent.

On the evening of December 24, 2020, a serious fire broke out at my grandmother's home. She and my father lost their lives.

We had just left, my brothers, my sister and I, to visit my mother for Christmas.

When I arrived at the scene, I can still see myself smashing my knuckles against the asphalt and screaming:

"Why!"

The firefighters and the police watched me collapse in front of the horror of the situation.

After that, you ask yourself a thousand and one questions. Why the same day as my father's suicide attempt? Why right after we left? Why right before their move, planned for the following year?

These questions led me to believe that there may be something we do not yet understand as human beings. Life is mysterious. It is full of secrets we may never manage to uncover. And that fascination convinced me that it is still worth living despite everything, and that we have to fight for it to be fulfilling.

The relapse and the breaking point

When I went back to the army, I found my old demons again. I started drinking again. And with alcohol, the blackouts came back.

One night, I could not remember anything anymore and I wanted to take my car. My comrades tried to stop me, not very gently. But on the essential point, they were right.

I had an accident. Brand new car. Wreck.

I could have died. I could have hurt someone. That night was a breaking point.

Today, alcohol and drugs are no longer part of my life, and they have not been for a long time. It is probably the vicious circle I am proudest of having broken.

Love, again

I ended up leaving everything for love. And I did everything wrong for it.

With a complicated childhood and adolescence, I had become emotionally dependent. The person I loved became the center of my world.

How did it end? She cheated on me, several times. And you know the best part? I forgave her. Looking back, I can laugh about it. At the time, not so much.

I chose to go back to my roots. That is where I met the mother of my child.

I became an ambulance worker, wanting to help others. It is a difficult job, especially in the private sector, where some management seems to have forgotten what helping people really means. But this job matches something deeply rooted in me.

People. Helping. Understanding. Being there.

Music

There is one thing that stayed with me through all of it: music.

And more precisely, the music of Twenty One Pilots.

Their songs talk about what goes on in your head when things are not okay. Doubt, anxiety, thoughts going round in circles, and the fight not to let them win. At times when I could not talk to anyone, they put words to what I was feeling. They had a huge impact on my life, and they helped me a lot to hold on.

That is why the Virtuous Circle radio shares my personal YouTube playlists. Nothing deeper than that: their music is part of me, and now it is also part of the project.

From vicious to virtuous

Over time, I understood that life is only good to us if we ourselves bring a certain virtue around us.

The vibration of a positive person can make their surroundings more positive. You attract what you are. But you also attract obstacles, which you will have to overcome to get that ultimate reward: feeling, deep inside you, "Right now, I am happy."

And that is probably where the idea of Virtuous Circle really begins.

Because I have known many vicious circles. Bad company. Addictions. Depression. Emotional dependency. The urge to make money fast. Mistakes that lead to other mistakes.

But I ended up understanding that a circle can also turn the other way. One good decision can lead to another. One encounter can move you forward. One passion can save you from a bad path. One song can keep you standing on a night when nothing else can.

And little by little, a vicious circle can become a virtuous circle.

Creation

Creating has been part of my life for a long time, but I truly fell in love with pixel art less than a year ago. I was already immersed in the world of NFTs and, one day, I simply told myself: "And why not me?"

Crypto trading, on the other hand, is not for me. My impatience and my need to earn fast cost me dearly. I lost a lot, and I learned.

That is also why the rules of Virtuous Circle are written in advance and public. What goes to the community and what goes to me are kept separate, and I take no share of the budget voted by the community. I have seen what fast money does to people. I do not want this project to be an example of it.

I would like to guarantee you that nothing and no one will ever make me falter. But the reality is that I have already faltered. Several times. And every fall made me both stronger and more gentle.

That is my definition of resilience. Not becoming someone who never falls. Becoming someone who always ends up trying to get back up.

Behind WON3A

All of this may seem off topic in a section normally dedicated to a collection's lore. But talking about all of this does me good. And it is a reminder that there is always something behind what we see.

Behind a handle. Behind an artist. Behind a work. Behind WON3A.

We all have different lives, but they are still our lives. Your fears, your joys, your mistakes, your successes, your memories: all of this is part of you, and no one can ever take it from you.

Virtuous Circle is maybe simply that. Understanding that we do not control everything that happens to us, but that we can try to control what we do with it.

Thank you.

The Circles

A Circle starts with something simple. A circle.

An almost entirely random base, with colors that are just as random. Everything is drawn and chosen by hand. No predefined palette, no perfect combination to follow, and often no precise idea when I start.

Only one thing never changes: the circle itself. Because the circle represents life.

Frame after frame, the Circle starts to move and to transform. Sometimes, everything comes down to almost nothing: a pixel, a color, a detail that appears then disappears. A tiny difference can completely change what we perceive.

The first frame can mean a great deal. Or nothing at all. It is simply there. And a work does not need to be understood or loved by everyone to exist. Sometimes, its meaning does not exist yet. It will come with movement, with time, with its story.

Evolution

I have always found the idea of freezing something forever sad. An image condemned to stay the same sees its story stop almost the moment it begins.

A Circle can evolve slightly or deeply. Become brighter, darker, stranger, simpler or more chaotic. Each transformation becomes a new stage of its story. And the very first version is never lost: it remains the first page.

The Holder

The holder plays a central role, because they are the one who decides what happens to their Circle. They can leave it as it is, or make it evolve.

Each evolution adds to its number of transformations. That number becomes more than a piece of data: it is the trace of the path traveled. A Circle that has changed a lot and a Circle that has never moved do not tell the same thing. One is not superior to the other. They simply followed two paths.

If a Circle changes holder, its story does not start over from zero. The new holder inherits the past transformations and the choices of those who came before them.

The holder is therefore the temporary guardian of this story. They do not decide what existed before them. But they take part in what comes next.

A New Circle

The collection is not meant to stay frozen. A new Circle can appear and join it.

Why? Because everything is born from somewhere, and sometimes from nothing. An idea can appear when it did not exist the day before. A new story can begin without any extraordinary reason. I do not see why the universe of Virtuous Circle should prevent that.

But I also know what collectors think when they read this: inflation. And they are right to ask the question. So let's be clear: being born in Virtuous Circle is deliberately rare and costly.

A new Circle is not obtained like a simple mint. You first have to get involved in the community to earn the right to it, then order it at a price well above the floor. I draw each of them by hand, and production is deliberately limited to a set number of slots at a time. And part of what each birth brings in goes to support the Circles that already exist.

A birth is never taken lightly. And that is intended. The detailed rules are in the documentation.

A newly born Circle has no past. No evolution. No previous holder. And that is exactly it: this is its starting point. It is no less important than a Circle that has been here since the beginning. It simply starts its cycle later.

A story does not need to have existed since the beginning to have the right to begin.

Alone

A Circle has no written story. No name, no defined past, no personality.

Circles are not characters. They do not speak, do not think, do not feel anything. And they do not need to be anything else to have meaning. They carry a symbolism: that of the cycle of life.

Human beings can look enormously alike and tell completely different stories. So can Circles. They all start from a circle. What happens next creates their identity.

And there is a reason why the Circle is alone.

We are all surrounded by people who can advise us, help us, love us or hurt us. But no one can live our life for us. In the same way, everyone can look at a Circle and have an opinion about it. But only one person can decide its next transformation: its holder.

You may have noticed it: each Circle does not occupy the same place in its frame. This is not a random choice. As you browse the collection, you will see Circles very close to one another, and others completely far apart. I found it pretty fun: creating, without saying it, a closeness between your Circle and someone else's.

A Circle is alone. But it is never really far from the others.

Today, a Circle exists alone. That does not mean it always will.

Now this is where it gets interesting.

Since the beginning, I have been talking to you about Circles, transformations and cycles. And I told you that a Circle is not a character. That does not mean it can never accompany one.

Virtuous Circle is designed as the first step of a bigger project. My goal is to create a second collection, this time with real characters: beings able to exist in a world, to move around in it, to evolve and to live their own adventure. I would like to see it born during 2027. It is a vision and a direction of work, not a date set in stone.

The idea is to be able to integrate a Circle into a character.

I am not going to explain everything yet, because a lot of things can change between now and then. And because you have to keep a bit of surprise, otherwise I might as well publish my whole brain on GitHub lmaooo.

But one idea will not move: the Circle's past will matter.

A Circle that has gone through several transformations will not become an object without history when it joins a character. It will arrive with what it has been. Its number of evolutions. Its history. The choices of its previous holders.

That is why I care so much about keeping every old version. Today, it is the history of a work. Tomorrow, it could become much more.

A character and their Circle will then be able to write a new part of their story together. But they will need a place to live it.

And that place already has a name.