User blog comment:Bluebutterflychan/Headcanon Corner: Science and Sorcery/@comment-3991308-20161208021533

(gets down on one knee) (gets out ring)

would you please like to talk science & sorcery in EAH 24/7 because dude, this is amazing

the idea of a magical periodic table and a non-magical periodic table makes a lot of sense to be, tbh. here’s a potential exploration on how it might work

on a subatomic perspective, it seems hard to imagine new /elements/ (in the scientific sense). like, an atom with 1 proton is always hydrogen, so unless the atoms of the “magical” elements are composed of baryons other than protons & neutrons, it seems impossible.

alas, having magical elements composed of different baryons seems just too complex. as someone who likes to go by the principle of Occam’s Razor, it just doesn’t do for me.

personally, rather than thinking on a subatomic level on why a second periodic table might exist, i offer a conjecture – it's a historical thing. or more rather, a convention thing.

I was thinking: modern chemistry takes it roots in alchemy – through alchemy, humans refined the process of purifying substances, began the first chemical experiments (one of the most famous is king’s water and gold?).

one thing I remember while looking through old alchemy notes was that sometimes, mixtures & alloys were treated as “pure” elements, even though (by modern classifications), they are not.

sometimes, in science, when you have a very solid theory, but there’s another theory that comes over and smacks that theory to the ground, you dump that theory. other times, you stick your original theory together with duct tape and use it when necessary. example: newton’s laws, although wrecked by Einstein’s laws of relativity, are still viable in physics today.

what am i getting at? okay – consider this: although alchemy’s classification of what makes things “pure”, what is considered an “element”, etc, etc, is outdated and incorrect in regards to modern chemistry, alchemy still works. So alchemists see no point in breaking down and changing their current structure. Just as electrical engineers still use convention current, alchemists still use their language.

does that mean that chemistry and alchemy are the same science with a different language? i don’t know.

as for “magical” chemistry and “non-magical” chemistry, i imagine it sort of similar to how the divide between organic and non-organic chemistry was seen? before, people used to think that organic molecules had a “vital force” – what if “magical” molecules have a “magical force”? and even better: what if, in reality, no “magical force” exists, and a few hundred years later from the current timeline, that paradigm is destroyed.

as for magic & my own OCs: Turnus Wyllt is the first to come to mind. He’s the son of a mage and a sorceress, his lineage is grouped under the umbrella term of “wizard”. His magic works in a similar fashion to ATP. I haven’t worked out the specifics on how it works (ATP works by binding to myosin heads, but i have yet to work out a magical equivalent), but Turnus’ malfunction with magic is explained in a fair bit of detail on his page.