Fascinating

The stories that Magic tell more explicitly are also beautiful and interesting in their own right (this whole thing was sparked by me seeing Karn holding the head of Elesh Norn, the white Praetor and the representation of the forefront of a new emergent order of corrupt thought), but I think there are also the stories told through card design and the process of Magic evolving as a game, which itself has a ton of selection pressures against it.