"Secessio Proletarii"
Artists: https://www.instagram.com/poofinatory2k/
Babylon Today is an old project of mine dating back to 2009
Centrally starring this little snowflower: Grande Princesse Marie Aurore
(drawn by poofinatorY2K)
Imagine a world devoured by megacorporations and an endless pursuit of greed above all. Imagine a world where democracy has been vanquished by the forces of darkness, and the people's voice has been silenced. Plutocrats, oligarchs, and a new age of gilded monarchs have used the promises of digital technology and artificial intelligence to seize absolute power and have done away with any pretense of a just world in the name of brutalitarian powermongering. Capitalism has begun to decay into a new feudalism, and it seems impossible to stop the relentless march of the wicked.
Can you imagine such a thing?
In this world, France fell first to a plutocratic populist playing off a generation of online malcontents and anime-obsessives, and he rode their loyalty like a political rock star, carried all the way to absolute power and the desecration of republican liberal democracy. This man, Ludovic de Séville, crowned himself as a modern Roman Emperor, and his techno-feudalist comrades rebuilt the country and then the continent as a post-Enlightenment plutocratic empire where the rich live above the clouds and the poor rot below. High-tech palaces gleam in the light of Château du Soleil, and cities of glass shine over the broken and brutalized slums. Frozen-AGI networks seem to have perfected surveillance, up to and including the terrifying brain-computer interface known as "LoveNet"— giving the state the ability to perfectly monitor, write, and even remotely control those under its psychotronic arrest.
The ruling family— House Séville— rules with unchecked cruelty, and yet also with great levity. You may be a worthless merdailles, nothing more than a plaything of the ruling elite, but you will be entertained by your own misery.
At the very center of this spectacle stands Grande Princesse Marie-Aurore, a doll-like heiress designed from birth to embody her father’s empire, with only a secretive artificial general intelligence for true company. She is the culmination of the regime's efforts, born as the first post-human and raised to be the adorable "Snowflower" of the empire, the wonderful daughter of France, the shining daughter of the Sun. She is to be the shining flame of the ruling classes burning across the rest of history. All of their power-games and consolidation of control led to her: the Aryan Royale.
And yet, while the people whispered of revolution, a shadowy masked figure named "Meki" stirred fury and hope across the world.
Of course. Every tale of revolution needs its working class hero.
Every protest song needs its champion.
Can you imagine all this?
Is it perhaps a bit too silly?
Well what if I asked you this:
Imagine that the revolution has won.
Through a linear sequence of miracles, the people have emerged victorious. The Séville regime, their cronies, the entire apparatus meant to forcibly wither the masses away, has been smashed.
Now the princess who lived at the apex of privilege sits under guard in a damp country château, a captive alongside her disgraced family. At only 16 years old, her birthright has fallen away. All that she had been raised to expect, all that she was supposed to become, is no more.
All that's left is a crushing daily regimen under house arrest in an old Vendée estate, overseen by men who have suffered all so she could live in luxury.
The world outside her barricaded windows is cheering, festive over her misfortune, celebrating her defeat. Her family, once so powerful, who had utterly won capitalism and history itself, now festers as just six tattered and dirty human beings who can't even control their own daily life.
How marvelous!
