I do think there is a time and place that I would have been excited for a Phyrexian storyline in MTG. Even one where multiple characters I care about suffered, died, were compleated, etc.

After years of people dying or having to deal with the issues from long covid en masse I'm just.. tired. It would be one thing if it was a series of stories about processing the feelings of losing people, of families, of being around all this... I dunno. Tamiyo "dies," leaving behind all of her family. We see nothing more. We're getting so much death/loss of characters and even entire planes (at least, that's the impression you'd get) and just... moving on. Immediately. Sure, "time constraints are a thing" and whatever, they gotta hurry! Except... some of these stories were supposed to be going on simultaneously. No feelings (except when it gives us a forced excuse to kill off a character again). Just action.

I know there's a "Aftermath" set coming. That... does not make me feel better about this writing style and story driving style. Some Marvel style bullshit is coming. I can just feel it. The block format being gone means everything just feels like trauma tourism, over and over. We show up just in time for the bad. We leave before anything can start doing anything about it.

Endwalker felt really nice. I don't know if I would say it was as good of a story as Shadowbringers, but it felt like a good end to the arc and also particularly timely when it comes to trying to not lose hope. The fact that the patch storyline hasn't... exactly been heavy on the trying to escalate things. I'm sure stuff will get there again -- but in the meantime? We've gotten slices of life, backstories, but... also we've gotten visions of people processing everything that happened. It was in the main arc, but more of it, more of what getting by can mean.

I don't know if there's too much of a point to this rambling just... fucking sigh.

EDIT:

That's what it is. We're back to Ravnica: Murder Rampage edition. OG Ravnica was terrible. It wasn't a place. We've had to retcon all of it to make it a place and not just "look at all this violence" and... every plane is that now. Again.