Hey jay! I know you aren’t making story decisions, I’m curious what your thoughts are on the “wild west” plane being uninhabited before omenpaths? I am a bit worried that it’s gonna play into some manifest destiny tropes that are a tad … problematic ??We've had two days of story so far, I would wait for judgment until you see the whole thing. To be clear, the following is just my opinion, I was not privy to any of the discussions surrounding the decision to make Thunder Junction uninhabited.
Thunder Junction is uninhabited for a few reasons, a big one being it was going to be a melting pot of people post-Phyrexian Invasion trying to start fresh - as you can already see from the first two stories. It also deepens the mystery of the Vault, which is ancient. And it sidesteps some big issues, while obviously having other ones.
The Western genre as a whole has problematic elements, that doesn't mean we should never tell Western stories, but we should be cognizant of the pitfalls. We shouldn't be lionizing the colonizers, as the genre has historically done. That doesn't mean we just shouldn't tell any Western stories, and not all flavor is allegory to the real world.
It also doesn't mean that anyone who might have problematic views is intended to be a good. It's literally called
Outlaws of Thunder Junction. I would not assume then, from that, that it's going to be a plane full of good people. Phyrexians, I should note, have an innate sense of Manifest Destiny, but I don't think anyone would argue that they're portrayed as a good thing.
But also, stories can have people with problematic worldviews without the stories themselves being problematic. I'm not saying that's the case here, but in general.
