So I've been seeing a lot of debate around soft vs. hard magic systems.

I have to state that (as title says) it is a stupid and pointless distinction in any way other than as a discussion of approaches to storytelling, such as 3rd person vs. 1st person, or 3rd person omniscient vs. 3rd person limited.

When it comes to Malazan, everyone always seems to ignore the fact that the magic is based on a magic system in a TTRPG system that obeys strict rules and as such is in fact a hard magic system - while also ignoring the fact that hard magic systems make as little sense as soft systems.

Tell me what makes sense about a Druid being able to teleport through trees in D&D; do they open a portal? Then why do they need a tree? Are trees somehow magically connected? Then where is the in-depth explanation of mycelial networks and how they chemically interact with surrounding plants (do we really need a doctoral thesis in the middle of our dungeon crawl). Oh, so ingesting metal gives you superpowers? Please explain the digestion process and how minerals interact with the nervous system. "What, can't do it? Pff, I hate those undefined soft magic systems" [sarcasm].

See my point? Nothing in magic is explainable (and really only a tiny part of science is) so quibbling about which is inherently better is a foolish endeavour.

Most of the strongest proponents of hard magic need to constantly break their own rules (looking at you Blanderson); and soft magic writers run the risk of creating Deus Ex Machinae by divorcing plot and reader knowledge. (For the sake of argument I'm ignoring the possibility of authorial incoherency; if an author can't keep things coherent then the problem is not that of hard vs soft but something else entirely)

Which circles back to my initial statement: the only real difference is in how much info is given to the reader; and that's just a general writing question: How much is enough, how much is too much.

So, please, debate all you want about your opinions on their impact on writing style, but for the love of K'rul please stop trying to argue one is inherently better and/or necessary than the other...

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(Sorry, I feel ranty today)...