A Better Ending to Harry Potter

Click to skip the introduction

Harry Potter had some great characters, ones that compelled you to read about them. The worldbuilding isn't too special. We've seen magical boarding schools, saying cantrips to invoke magic, using a channeling agent (wand) to perform magic, centaurs, trolls, potions, divination, herbology, teleportation, transfiguration, etc., etc (quidditch, however, was an excellent innovation). In many places the worldbuilding is just awful. For example, in a world where the government controls a reliable method of time travel, there should be no crime. You know exactly when and where each crime takes place. Maybe you should pop by five minutes before and throw a cheeky binding spell on them with those wands you got.

But one of the things I really didn't like was the ending. A book is only as good as its promises' fulfillment. Granted, the primary promise of Harry Potter is that Harry will defeat the Dark Lord. But I felt like there was a level of "Harry will become a powerful wizard" thrown in there too, which didn't happen. He learned like four spells and won by a fluke of wand ownership. I can't believe I read over a million words just to come to that conclusion.

A note on wand ownership: kids practice dueling and such all the time. Wand ownership in Hogwarts should be royally effed. Why wouldn't they have practice wands for such circumstances? This is another example of shoddy worldbuilding—an instance where she introduced a new element without considering how it affected that which came before.

The love magic/sacrificial protection was also a mess. Everyone was so dumbfounded when Harry survived as a child. Has no one in this world ever sacrificed themselves for another person? James sacrificing himself didn't save Lilly? The implementation at the end of book seven was even worse. You have to die in order for love magic to activate. Harry chooses to come back and it somehow still affects the Hogwartsers.

Harry Potter: "I was ready to die to stop you from hurting these people —"
Lord Voldemort: "But you did not!"
Harry Potter: "— I meant to, and that's what did it. I've done what my mother did. They're protected from you. Haven't you noticed how none of the spells you put on them aren't binding? You can't torture them. You can't touch them."

What kind of counterintuitive hogwash is that? "I meant to die. Duh, why else would I have chosen to come back? Lol, Voldiboi so stuped."

Alright. So I've outlined some of my problems with the ending. My biggest one is the wand ownership fluke. It just made the victory feel so cheap; felt like it betrayed the promise of the whole series. I'll reiterate, the promise of Harry Potter is, Harry will defeat Voldemort. Harry won because he said "expeliarmus" once to Draco. That's an exceedingly interchangeable cog; anyone could have done that. It really felt like it was chance and not Harry that defeated Voldemort. Like, we've been building up the whole series on this promise, and then it goes and tries to shove the wrong puzzle piece into the hole.

It felt like the type of ending you'd see in a comedy. Like Douglas Adams would have come up with the same thing. You've spent all this time prepping to fight the Dark Lord, then you defeat him by accident.

Without further ado, here's my shot at writing a more satisfying ending (obviously an outline).

A Better Ending

Harry goes to Voldemort, offers himself, and enters the crossroads of twilight where he chills with Dumbledore. During the chat, Albus says Harry can choose to return should he wish. Harry says no, that would negate his sacrifice (perhaps even mentioning the love magic). Dumbledore smiles and says, "Alright, let's be off then." They get up to leave King's Cross.

Then Voldemort appears.

It's the fraction of his soul that was horcruxed away inside Harry all these years.

"Death never felt so good, did it, Potter?" (Or whatever evil line he says.) "You realize your sacrifice is a farce, don't you? It doesn't matter if I can't directly harm your little friends, I have deatheaters plenty for that. We will break them. Enslave them. Use them to kill and rise to power across the world."

Voldemort continues to talk and reveals something (I'm not sure what, could just be general goading like above), which causes Harry realize he needs to go back. He tells Dumbledore, who is about to send him on his way.

Then Voldemort attacks.

Harry duels the fraction of the Dark Lord's soul on the crossroads of twilight—the fraction that he's been fighting all these years. Unbridled, raw magic flows between them, but Voldemort is only a fraction of what he should be, so he can't tap into the magic as well. Harry obliterates the soul fragment, then turns to Dumbledore.

"I can't let them fight this alone. But I need something I can do. Please, professor, there must be some dueling tip or other magic trick you can give me. If I time everything right, I can show up and defeat Voldemort before the deatheaters even know what's happening. Even if they kill me again after that, I need to save my friends."

"Well, Harry, things are a bit fuzzy on this side of thing. Tell me, does Voldemort currently possess the Elder Wand?"

"Yes."

"Ah. If I'm not mistaken, you disarmed Malfoy some weeks ago, yes?"

"I did."

"And it wasn't all that long ago young Draco disarmed me. I wonder who then is the proper owner of the Elder Wand?"

"Well wouldn't it be Voldemort, because he did just kill me."

"Harry, correct me if I'm wrong, but you just defeated Voldemort, did you not?"

Hope swells in Harry's chest. "Professor, are you saying—"

Dumbledore smiles. "Go, Harry. There may yet be some help you can give."

End chapter. The next chapter starts with Voldemort and friends saying come join us to the goodfolk of Hogwarts. When no one does, battle breaks out. The rest of the chapter is a montage of different characters locked in war, and the whole time you're thinking, where the heck is that Potter boy?

Next chapter. Harry opens his eyes and takes in what's going on. He spots Voldemort not too far away, gets up, and shouts, "Tom."

The Dark Lord turns and freaks out. "Potter? How in the acromantula tits are you alive?"

"Magic, you dumb twat. Now give me my wand."

"Your wand? How about I give you this, avada kedavra!"

A blast of green energy flies at and bounces off Harry. Voldemort recoils in shock and shoots another killing spell. Harry advances.

"I said, give me my wand," Harry says as death curses continue to glance off him.

"How are you doing that?" Voldemort says between green blasts.

"I said—" Harry reaches out his hand and performs a silent accio spell. The Elder Wand leaps from the Dark Lord's fingers to Harry's. "Give. Me. My. Wand."

Tom Riddle falls back, arm flung in front of his face.

"When people ask about today, I'll simply tell them you died as you lived. With a flash of green. AVADA KEDAVRA."

Recap

Obviously this is just a hash-up of ideas, and it's just a first draft at that. There are definitely things that could be made better. But I hope you see the merits of this idea.

1. This delivers on the promise of the series. It makes the revelation of wand ownership a lot more impactful. It's much less of a shoehorned-in, nearly after-the-fact "twist," and more of an exciting, actionable reveal. Makes defeating Voldemort a choice rather than an accident.
2. This gets rid of the love magic problem at the end. No weird, lumpy logic there. No, "I broke the fundamental rule of sacrificial protection, but it still works anyway."
3. Harry actually gets to fight and defeat Voldemort—twice. The first time is an intense magic battle of unbridled proportions. The second is a straightforward, "you are puny, I am mighty" smackdown. It's not won on a fluke, but because Harry actually was the better wizard (at the crossroads, which translates to the Battle of Hogwarts).
4. It allows Harry to directly defeat the fraction of Voldemort's soul that had been lodged within him his entire life. I think the whole "Voldemort kills his own horcrux" was clever. I think it would have been more clever if Harry had planned it (honestly he might have, it's been awhile since I read the books). I also think it would be very satisfying if Harry was able to defeat it himself.
5. Also, I personally am partial to the idea of Harry using the killing spell once, to finally defeat the Dark Lord.

What do you think? Have any ideas to add?

Mellonostalgia

This is a post merely to document a new word I've coined. Mellonostalgia is a combination of the Greek mellon (future) and nostalgia. It is a wistful longing for things that have not yet been. Things that, perhaps, may never be.

Some examples. Your friend is going to go to school for a degree that you have gotten. Your brain cycles through all the possibilities they have before them, all the things which you did and wish you had done, and perhaps your heart hurts in anticipation on their behalf. This is mellonostalgia.

Someone you loved deeply breaks up with you. Your world is shattered, and your mind flashes through the life you could have had together. The small moments you might have shared. This is mellonostalgia. A rueful remembrance of the future.

My Issues with Episode VIII

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I saw this movie a couple days ago and just needed some place to catalog all the reasons I thought it wasn't up to quality.

Holdo withholds info, spurring Finn toward a useless expedition that gets loads of people killed.

• There's no reason Space Cadet Jane needed to be all secretive about their plans.
• Finn's entire plot during this movie was useless, and Rose felt forced as a character.
• They can't get the code breaker's contact info from Maz, or even try to look it up online? They have to physically fly to his planet (which happens to be close enough) and get him?
• The casino place, which ended up not even being used, got more exposition than any other part of the movie.
• Meeting the code breaker was garbage. There's how many jail cells, and you get put in one with a guy who happens to be able to break through First Order encryption on the fly?
• Their entire mission to save their friends is jeopardized beyond redemption, but a shot at redemption comes along and their response is, "Nope." They don't even consider it.
• BB-8 takes down a bunch of guards. Felt like it leaned too heavily on comedy and not on "this could actually happen."
• Rose taking the saddle off the fathier and saying, "Now it was worth it," is such an eye-rolling moment. For all they know, their mission was a complete failure. All their friends are going to die. But you took a saddle off one animal that's going to be rounded up in an hour, and now it's worth it?
• Phasma was built up to be this big deal, then she poofed after like a minute.
• The giant First Order ship gets destroyed by the hyperspace jump. Everbody in armor: dead. Finn and Rose: A-okay.
• Even though Finn, Rose, and Poe do a thing that gets people killed, there are no repercussions for them (admittedly they did it because of poor leadership).
• At the very least, the First Order would have been able to see the heat signal from the escape ships' exhaust (not to mention Finn and Rose's ship). They (the First Order) didn't need to make a deal with the code breaker.
• Rose crashes into Finn. I'll ignore whether or not this was a good decision plot-wise and simply ask, how in the world did she reach him? They have the exact same crappy speeders. He's going at full throttle. She turned away and has to circle back. There's no way she can catch up to him, let alone t-bone him.
• The kiss felt very "we're going to jam two mismatched puzzle pieces together." It didn't fit. There wasn't really a buildup to it. No chemistry between characters.
• How did they get back to the base? It took the cruisers quite a bit to get out there going at high speeds. Somehow Finn drags Rose back in like five minutes, and all without any enemies noticing and shooting them.
• All in all, Finn, a great character, was wasted in this film. His plotline was supposed to be about failure, but instead of him failing it was the writer(s).

"Somebody has to stay behind."

• No, you dumb cow, nobody has to stay behind. This is why they invented the computer. I promise the autopilot can handle flying in a straight line. If not, I promise you can control it remotely.
• Side note: this was a problem in Rogue One, too. People not knowing how computers work. "We have to get this hard drive physically to the top of this tower in order to transfer the info." No, that is absolutely not how computers work.
• Even if somebody did have to stay behind, it shouldn't have been Holdo. Leia or Ackbar would have been better. Someone who we care about should have been the focus of the most cinematically stunning scene in the movie.
• I couldn't tell if the hyperspace thing was her plan all along, or if she just thought of it as she was watching her fellows get obliterated. Her insistence that someone (her) stay behind makes me think it was in her plan. If so, why did she wait while the others got killed?
• The hyperspace kamikaze, though extremely cool, presents the issue of, why doesn't everybody just have hyperspace missiles? Why build humongous ships when someone could just hyperspace through it and shred it?

Let's make the main conflict be a whale hunt.

• Where were the TIE fighters? They've already shown that TIE fighters can damage the rebel ships. Why did they call them back if they're so dead-set on taking their enemies down? Poe can take down a dreadnought's entire weapons systems with one X-wing, but the First Order can't spare a single TIE fighter?
• It's been pointed out to me that they knew the rebels would run out of fuel (not sure how the FO knew), so it was economically better for them to wait it out than to expend ships taking them down. We know the FO has resources though (they built a planet that could eat stars and have loads of ships and troops), so I don't wholly buy that argument. Also, they destroyed a bunch of rebel fighter ships already. My response to "we can't cover you from this distance" is, once again, computers. Self-driving ships.
• Why in the eff were lasers fired in space arcing in a parabolic trajectory? I know they do things that don't always gel with physics, but some (lightsabers) it's assumed there's a technological reason for it. The arcing lasers just felt like bad design.
• I refuse to believe they're using anything except fusion or fission to power these ships (since they have limited amounts of fuel, so they're not using radiant energy). That being said, the fuel should have lasted a lot longer.
• Why couldn't the First Order have called in more ships? I'm sure you could have some hyperspace in ahead of the rebels and come at them the opposite way.

Snoke? Snoke who?

• Here's an incredibly strong force user that's been around since the Empire. How did he rise to power? Where was he during Palpatine's reign? Response: Lol, why would anyone want to know that?
• Luke says that Snoke already had too strong a hold on Ben Solo. How did they come in contact? Internet chat room? 
• Snoke, who can arrange force Skype sessions for other people, who can levitate other force users, who can read minds, etc. etc., doesn't notice that Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber is being turned through the force four inches away from him? Not believable.
• How are we supposed to care that Kylo took him out if we don't even know anything about him?

The Amazing Flying Leia!

• What on earth was that?
• You go unconscious pretty fast in space. Not to mention she was already unconscious from the blast (but she wasn't really hurt?). But somehow she came out of that and was able to use the force to fly back to the ship? Not believable.
• We've known she's force sensitive, but she's never actually used the force before in her life. Now that she's unconscious in the cruel vacuum of space, she can suddenly use it.
• Also, how did they get her back in the ship? When they opened that latch, it would have sucked them out into space, not to mention their oxygen.
• I wish there would have been some follow-up to her suddenly using the force. They completely ignore that it happened.

Luke.

• I feel like they weren't really true to his character. I know it's been a long time and things happen, but still. He's always been the guy who defends others and jumps in to help where he can. Why would he run away from Ben Solo alone when he had all these other apprentices?
• We never get to see his reaction to Han dying. It just cut away from that. Obviously not as important as drinking green milk from tumid space teats.
• He's cut himself off to the force for how long, and as soon as he opens himself up to it again he can do amazing feats like astral project into the physical plane across bazillions of miles?
• There was no reason for him to die. "Oh boy, what a hard day's work. Guess I'll die." The logic behind it is very shaky.
• So he's lost his hope. Okay. His turnaround for regaining hope seemed kind of quick.
• When he saw Leia, I really wanted him to say, "Wanna make out again?"

Force power creep.

• I'm a little iffy on the power creep we've seen going on with the force. The limits keep getting blurred (not that they were crazy well defined to begin with, but it was never so grand).
• Being able to force two other people into a distance-disregarding face-to-face talk is pretty big. Being able to astral project and talk and give dice is big.
• When is it going to stop? How preternatural are force wielders going to get by the end? 
• Some foreshadowing for new abilities would be nice, at the very least. I guess Yoda hit Luke with his cane, maybe showing that force ghosts can interact with the physical plane.

We need more humor!

• Star Wars has always had humor, but it feels out of place in this movie. Big explosion, lost a lot of people and equipment, Poe flies back, BB-8 flies by with a comedic scream (of course neither of them got injured when everyone else did).
• Maybe they're going to merge Marvel and Star Wars at some point, so they're prepping audiences by duplicating the humor.

How do I Reyact to this?

• I did like Rey better in this movie. She was much less of an I-can-do-everything type.
• Her training . . . was essentially no training. It was Luke proving that he can complain about things. And that's it.
• Didn't like how they built up this "darkness under the island," then when she goes down there it's a mirror that shows . . . a reflection of her. Wow. So amaze. Dark side so mystery.
• I reeaally wanted her to join Kylo Ren. I guess it's okay that she didn't, but can you imagine?
• How did she get off the ship and back to the Falcon? Do none of these ships have cameras?

Kylo Ren is good.

• He's my favorite character. Great performance by Adam. Great conflict and weaknesses.
• He was really the only one in the movie that acknowledged that Han Solo had died. Kind of disappointing.
• Where are the other apprentices Kylo took with him?
• There were no lightsaber duels in this movie. Almost one between Kylo and Luke. Almost one between Kylo and Rey. But no. This was the least lightsaber-intensive Star Wars movie ever.
• He doesn't notice that Luke is holding Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber, which was just destroyed by Kylo and Rey. I can write this off as him being blinded by rage, but still.
• He says that Rey killed Snoke. Once again, are there no cameras!?

I think that about wraps it up, though I'm sure there were more things (like them saying godspeed). My question is, what happened? Did Rian Johnson and everyone at Disney start taking stupid pills? Sure, there are plenty of things that you could argue are stylistic choices, but there are lots of things that are just straight up defects. Can Episode IX save this trilogy? Yes. Will it? I doubt it.

The Omission of Transmission

There's an issue I see a lot when certain scientific topics come up. I don't think it can properly be termed a logical fallacy, though by brute definition it certainly qualifies. I think a more appropriate expression would be conviction tempered with ignorance. At any rate, the issue is as follows:

Someone reads/sees a piece of media about some technology/substance. The video makes a claim on what could be done with this technology, often with the implicit, "If only those dang capitalists and politicians weren't so stubborn and greedy!" Our enthusiast, who in all honesty has society's best interests at heart, now forms an emotional connection with the assertion and becomes belligerent when confronted with opposing views.

Two examples: power and cancer cures. I see media all the time claiming things to the tune of, a solar farm yea big in thus a location could provide the world's energy needs. Maybe it's algae. Maybe it's solar panels in orbit. Maybe it's a crop of wind turbines. I also see media, or just people, shouting that thus and such a substance kills cancer, but the government keeps it illegal.

Where our sanguine enthusiasts err is in transmission. They fail to understand how massive, long distance power works. If you were to try and power the world from one solar farm in the Sahara, all you would accomplish is heating a lot of wire. They fail to grasp that simply because something kills cancer doesn't mean that it can do so in vivo without compromising the well-being of the host. Fire kills cancer. Toss a hunk of cancer into a vat of gasoline, light it up, then try and tell me the cancer's still alive after everything's burned down.

The unfortunate thing, I've found, is that though most of these people are well-meaning, they won't let go of their convictions once presented with counter evidence, because they've welded themselves to their convictions with emotion. The trick is to disillusion them in a friendly manner so that they won't hate you when they don't believe you. An even greater trick is to disillusion yourself regardless of the manner.

Stoneslayer Draft 2, Beta Reads, and The University Vignettes

By way of update, a little over a week ago I finished the second draft of Stoneslayer. I had hoped to reduce the word count under 120k, but I ended up making it about 450 words longer, ending at 123.5k. I've sent it to a ton of beta readers (~20). We'll see whether they get to the end :) So far their suggestions have been to add more...

The University Vignettes:
I suppose I should make a mention of a longstanding project I've had called The University Vignettes (working title). I wrote a random kernel of a short story back in March 2015, which I rediscovered in August 2016 and finished. That project became "The Future's Price", a commentary on the cost of higher education through a very grim fantasy story. You can listen to a reading I did here.

But it doesn't end there. I got the idea to make a series of commentaries in this fashion, which I've tentatively titled The University Vignettes. There will be five short stories all told. They're all separate stories (well, #'s 1 and 4 are from the same POV), but they reference each other and focus around a particular event at the university, the breaking of the Jewel of Tusco (a giant stained-glass window).

Just the other day I finished the second of these stories, named "To What Degree?" The alpha reader reactions have been overwhelmingly positive, which is encouraging. This is a slow burning project though, so there's no telling when exactly I'll make it to the next vignettes. I do already have the epilogue written. I'd like to say I'll finish before the end of summer, but with the helter-skelter angle I've taken with this I'm much more comfortable saying the end of the year. Once they're all done, I'm going to publish them in a little anthology.

Evoking the Fantastical Milieu: Naming

This post will focus specifically on names and words.

Names are powerful. Glance over the two following lists of names:

• Daniel, Samuel, Adam, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Joshua, David, Zach, Aaron, Benjamin, Jonathan
• Abdon, Dishon, Jerah, Maher-shalal-hash-baz, Phallu, Urijah, Vophsi, Zeror

If you were raised in a biblically influenced country, the first list will likely seem mundane to you. However, the second list will immediately transport one to a land far away and so unlike our own. In case you didn't guess, all of the above names are from the Bible. If you know your audience, you can evoke impressions and emotions by choosing the right names.

In The Dinosaur Lords, Victor Milan lifts names straight from Spanish (Spañol), French (Francés), German (Alemán), English (Anglysh), and Russian (Slavo). He references countries and principalities in approximately the same locations as Spain, France, Germany, England, and Russia. The primary difference from our world is that they use dinosaurs for warfare. I personally would have preferred an alternate world rather than just an alternate history, but Milan did what he did so that he could immediately put impressions of these countries in our heads without having to devote much time for cultural backgrounds. A shortcut, if you're not looking to build a whole world.

Your names need a sense of uniformity in their foreignness. One option is to pick a language and lift all your names from that language. For Stoneslayer I used Hebrew. I made some rules, like all B's became V's. I often changed A's into E's. The particle 'om' means god (instead of 'el'), so lots of names end with that. Some other things like that. By my count, there are 96 separate names (some are used more than once though). Evrom, Matek, Shaleyu, Verutz, Lahilokh, Hayam. They have a sense of coherency, yet none are familiar to the reader.

For Orluvoq I used Greenlandic. It's a base I've essentially never seen in the books I've read. Orluvoq, Naalagaa, Ikingut, Nunapisu, Arsarneq, Arpap, Paarsisoq, Sinik. Once again, all very foreign, but all similar.

If you have multiple cultures, you need to make sure your naming bases are separate. Choose phonemes (basic units of sound) and some rules, then apply them to your names. In Augmentals I have one language that has a sound where they kiss the M. To represent it I use 'mm'. They also have the voiceless lateral fricative, which I represent with 'tl'. These are things that the reader will likely never consciously know, but their subconscious will pick up on the uniformity and whisper to them, "This is a solid book."

Magic Systems

In the earlier days of fantasy, magic was often a given nebulous force that accompanied the story. As the years have progressed, people have conjured up increasingly diverse scenarios and put new sets of constraints on their magic. From this there has arisen some sort of rift in the fantasy community between those who prefer a softer or a harder magic system.

Definition of Magic
I think it’s important that we first define magic. To me, magic is anything that is not possible within the bounds of the reader’s physics. Some people who prefer a soft approach to magic will say that anything that takes a more systematic, scientific approach disqualifies it from being magic. I say that whether or not it’s considered magic by the characters in the book is irrelevant to whether or not it’s magical to the reader. Because all of us live in the same world with the same physics, I think it’s safe to talk about the things outside of our laws under the umbrella term “magic”.

A Call for Mystique
Another argument I see a lot is that magic must have an air of mystique, a sense of wonder, a shroud of mystery. These people are conflating their preference with definitional limitation. That would be the same as saying magic must involve mental exertion, runes, ingredients, demons, handheld conduits, flashing lights, dead gods, temperature changes, incantations, exhaustion, sacrifices, or any other number of requirements. Certainly someone can have favorites, but personal penchants do not nullify all other options.

The Basis of Fantasy
The basis of fantasy and all good speculative fiction is that it poses a question and then explores the answers. The question is almost always in the form of, “How would humans react if they were put into a situation where [blank]?” (Possibilities for the blank: the gods interacted with men, dragons roamed the earth, there were other sapient species, certain people could control the weather?)

We live in a world that has figured out electricity and magnetism, wireless data transmission, nuclear power, space travel, DNA modification, vaccines, and endless other marvels. In a world where magic was relatively widespread, it would require great suspension of disbelief to pretend that that world’s humans hadn’t made any investigations into the nature, limits, and uses of that magic.

Now, there are possibilities of regressions, dark ages, and that their discoveries haven’t advanced very far yet. Maybe a god is keeping them from learning too much. Maybe they’re religious and kill anyone who uses magic outside the prescribed methods. Maybe they live in an extremely harsh environment and don’t have any extra time to devote to study. Maybe magic is only available to very few people. There are many good reasons why the world wouldn’t know very much about the limits of their magic. But human ingenuity, curiosity, and persistence are powerful forces, and I believe that wherever possible, they will have made at least some investigations into the strange powers at play in their world.

The Limitations of Constraints
I believe that constraints inspire more creativity than sheer freedom does. You see it in music when a composer decides, for example, to create something in a whole tone scale, never use the key’s base chord in the progression, write in 5/4, or use at least one augmented chord per measure. Working within limitations allows you to push the boundaries; when working with pure freedom there are no boundaries to push.

I hope the above explains why I lean more toward the hard magic end of the spectrum. Let’s take Sanderson’s Mistborn, specifically the steel push and the iron pull. At its core, these two powers are nothing more than telekinesis. However, the constraints that Sanderson places on them turns them into so much more. These include

• Must be a misting (born with the ability to burn a metal in your stomach)
• Must have your metal in your stomach; once out, so are your powers
• Can only push/pull on metals
• Can only push/pull in a straight, radial line from your center of mass
• Every push/pull reacts with a proportionate pull/push on you

So Sanderson took a very common power, telekinesis, put constraints on it, and turned it into something that’s far more interesting. Battles and puzzles require more creativity. I find that often when the magic is less defined I wonder why a particular magical solution wasn’t applied earlier than it was, or why it wasn’t applied again at a later point.

That being said, some people prefer a less systematic approach, just as some people prefer not to listen to music in 5/4 or music that has an augmented chord in every measure. Both opinions are right for those that hold them.

Conclusion
Both hard and soft magic systems are valid, even if you prefer one over the other. I have read, enjoyed, and written both kinds. However, I typically get more enjoyment out of hard systems, so I tend to use those in my bigger series so I can flex my creativity against the constraints.