Was listening to the Worlds Beyond Number fireside chat for arc 2 and the discussion of the use of D&D for a more narrative campaign got me thinking. In TTRPGs you have this great debate about system vs story or rules vs players/DM, and it's not unlike the debate you see in linguistics of language vs speakers. In linguistic studies we learn very early that a language should serve its speakers, and a big argument (and the one I agree with) on TTRPG spaces is that the system should serve the story and the game, and not the other way around. And those things mixed together got me thinking about how we as humans create and put in place so many systems that are supposed to make life easier or help us reach certain goals, but eventually we lose the thread and become chained and enslaved to the very systems that were meant to help us. I feel like this is a topic that not only I'd like to see addressed in SFF (specially in the dystopia AI rebellion sub genre) but also something we need to talk more about when we talk about the state of the world and what ideologies we buy into. Because in the root of every societal issue in the world is the naturalization and standardization of social constructs and humans being forced to conform to it, instead of changing those constructs to serve the materiality of humans as we are. Idk I feel like we need to start looking more at what lies in the core of the stuff we discuss, specially when it comes to media and art and entertainment
