We are in shock
We are in shock.
After what happened in Paris this weekend, it feels strange and eerie to be selling or promoting our girls with guns miniatures.
The reason we make miniatures is because we are storytellers. We create fantasy characters that are like pirates, kings and queens, cowboys and indians, like the ones we would fantasise about when we were kids.
We want them to be like the fairytale characters of our childhood, the ones who helped us grow and become better adults.
We want them to guide us through crazy adventures and amazing tales of fantasy, to make us dream and play and have fun. To gather with friends and chat about our great deeds on the gaming table and have a drink while we laugh and brag about our dice rolling prowess.
But we know that in the end, these are just stories and fairytales.
It has nothing to do with real war and hatred.
However, today, some people have mistaken a very dark and sick fairytale for the truth. They have fallen on the very, very dark side of some kind of very sick Force. And they want to bring down the rest of the world with them into their very sick and disturbed story.
All our lives are guided by the stories we tell and immerse ourselves in. Let’s make sure that the stories we choose keep on celebrating love, life, peace and joy.
There was this comment that you can read below that was posted by an American on a New York Times article a few days ago. You might have seen it already on Facebook. It is very touching for us because, even if France and the French are far from perfect, it tells everything we, as French people, think France should always stands for. This is the story we want to believe in the face of the forces of hatred:
Blackpoodles, Santa Barbara 2 days ago
France embodies everything religious zealots everywhere hate: enjoyment of life here on earth in a myriad little ways: a fragrant cup of coffee and buttery croissant in the morning, beautiful women in short dresses smiling freely on the street, the smell of warm bread, a bottle of wine shared with friends, a dab of perfume, children paying in the Luxembourg Gardens, the right not to believe in any god, not to worry about calories, to flirt and smoke and enjoy sex outside of marriage, to take vacations, to read any book you want, to go to school for free, to play, to laugh, to argue, to make fun of prelates and politicians alike, to leave worrying about the afterlife to the dead.
No country does life on earth better than the French.
Paris, we love you. We cry for you. You are mourning tonight, and we with you. We know you will laugh again, and sing again, and make love, and heal, because loving life is your essence. The forces of darkness will ebb. They will lose. They always do.