#magichemist makes

[magichemist-minecraft]

End of the year progress on the exterior of my clockwork sun mega base

[ssoupcup]

POV: you're a world destroying immortal demon being berated by an 18 year old ex-librarian

(/j. that’s not quite what happened.)

[magichemist-art]

Magichemist may have lost everything precious to him, but that doesn't mean he's lost his ability to make you suffer

[enbeemagical]

Magic and Science: an explanation

***probably will cross-post on my author blog***

Many things inspired me to start this Tumblr. Almost all my favorite blogs being on here may have been part of it. But as for what inspired the name? A superannoying line of Entrapta’s from She-Ra: Princesses of Power. I don’t remember the exact words, but something to the effect of “Magic and science, finally coming together!”

And I lost it. I could not keep watching. which may have had something to do with the horse that did not behave like a horse. (back to watching, b/c it is good, i’m just not quite as into it as i was)

See, magic and science, in any world with magic, would not be mutually exclusive. That’s what people don’t seem to understand. Magic would be studied just like every other force in the world. We already have optics, the science of light; zoology, the study of animals; virology, the study of Lord Viren viruses. We could also have mystics, magicology, magiology. Whatever you’d like to call it, it would be the study of magic. But so many authors don’t seem to understand basic science as it applies to things that don’t technically exist.

(As an aside, I adore Jessica Day George partly for this quote: “Magic is a science: there are rules. SHE CAN SCIENCE.)

Both my maternal grandparents are scientists, a biologist and a laser physicist. So I learned what science really was from a young age. And do you know what it is? Not lab coats. Not colored liquids. Not long, complex words. Not even giant Peeps it’s a cool story feel free to ask. What science really is, at its most basic, is two things: observation, and repeatable results.

If you drop a tennis ball once, and you watch it land on the ground, that is observation. But observation isn’t enough for science. You don’t know why the tennis ball landed on the ground. You don’t even know if it’ll happen next time. So you drop the tennis ball again. And again. You drop it ten times total, and every time it lands on the ground. Look, a repeatable result! You’re doing science.

But, you still don’t know much about why the tennis ball lands on the ground. Will it still land on the ground if you throw it up first? Well, it does ten times. What if you go somewhere else? What if you drop it at a different time of day? What if you have someone else drop it? Does it land on the ground no matter who drops it? What if you drop it from really high up?

Every time you conduct your experiment, your tennis ball lands on the ground, no matter who drops it, or where or when, or what you do with it first. Therefore, there must be some kind of force pushing or pulling it to the ground.

"But that’s gravity,” you say. “Everyone knows about gravity!” Well, yes. So let’s try it with something else. Let’s try it with Expelliarmus.

One day, you’re holding an interesting stick when somebody charges at you with a big rock. For some reason, you yell “Expelliarmus!” and the person drops the rock. Why did they do that? You don’t know. You decide to find out, because you rather like not having your head smashed in, and you think you’d like to find out how you protected yourself so you can do it again.

You try to think through what happened. You recreate the conditions as well as you can, only changing one thing. This time, you’re not in immediate danger, you just have a friend standing by holding a rock. “Expelliarmus!” you yell, and your friend drops the rock. Now, it could be coincidence, but you do this several more times, and every time, your friend drops their rock. They tell you it was like a force ripped the rock from their hands. Now you know you don’t have to be in actual danger.

Next, you decide to try doing it without the stick. Suddenly, shouting “Expelliarmus” doesn’t work any more. You try with several different sticks. Still no luck. You try with the stick you used at first, and your friend starts dropping the rock again.

Do you need to say the nonsense word? You try doing everything the same, except you don’t say “Expelliarmus.” Your friend’s not dropping the rock any more. When you say “Expelliarmus,” they do.

You continue experimenting, changing different factors, until you’re sure that in order to make someone drop their weapon, you need to be holding this particular stick, and you need to say “Expelliarmus.” Not everyone can do it, but you’re not the only one, either.

You start experimenting, and discover more strange words that do other things, but none of them ever work unless you’re holding a special stick. Eventually, you learn how to make these sticks. You call them wands.

Look, we’ve just proved that Harry Potter’s magic system is scientific! And, by extension, most existing magic systems. Try the above example with any other magic system. Dare ya.

See, if magic were not science, we would not be able to get such predictable results from it. We wouldn’t know what a spell would do until after we cast it, no matter how many times we’d cast it before. (hnn, kinda like a F&G trick wand.) It might not even do anything! I can’t think of any magic systems that work that way, but there’s probably one or two. Still, most of them rely on being able to do the same spell as someone else and get the same result.

Sure, magic doesn’t typically play by the rules of our world, but that doesn’t mean it’s not science! Magic alters our rules of science, it doesn’t play entirely outside them. A system like that would be incredibly difficult to write plausibly, let alone live in.

In my world, since magic came into the world relatively recently, they have magiscience: the study of magic and how normal scientific laws change when you add magic into the mix. (That’s where my name came from!) 

Imagine, if you will, a magiphysicist trying to figure out invisibility. In the real world, with real-world science, I’m pretty sure a truly invisible (not just well-camouflaged) person wouldn’t be able to see because their eyes wouldn’t be able to take in light. But with magic in the mix, they would, and somebody studying magioptics would want to figure out why.

Or imagine a magizoologist trying to figure out how rocs can fly, or how dragons can breathe fire, or why unicorn horns purify water. Or a magichemist teaching about magical potions and how they’re different from normal chemistry or soup.

The only problem with this system is that I have to figure out a pseudoscientific explanation for everything! As of now, I’ve got magic that’s specifically channeled life-energy, mammalian dragons that lay eggs and eat specific rocks, unicorns who actually have two horns that grow together to look like one horn (i guess that would be one horn, two horn buds), mermaids with gills and lungs, and vampires who just sunburn really fast, really bad.

[magichemist-minecraft]

Minecraft Backrooms

Bottom Text

[magichemist-minecraft]

The Ant Farm is a grand structure that lays just beyond the mountains to the East of the Hub. The perfect enclosure, full of enrichment that encompasses all of vanilla Minecraft's overworld features

[magichemist-minecraft]

Just South of the Shattered Spine Spires lies the corpse of an ancient dragon its skeleton just buried by the white sandy dunes. The North bound winds give the town an uneasy air.

[magichemist-minecraft]

The Shattered Spine Spires is a lonely town at the edge of the wastes. Its streets quiet and people cold despite the way the sun beats down. They do not know the disaster they will face in time.

[magichemist-minecraft]

It is time to update you all on my western town mega base project. This is currently being built on the WebSMP server and has the temporary name of "Gay Cowboy Town"

[magichemist-minecraft]

Tell me you've got a massive ego with out telling me you've got a massive ego

[magichemist-minecraft]

The Amethyst Wastes lay to the South East of the Shattered Spine Spires. Their unsettling glow paints the desert in a deep purple hue as the moon rises.

[magichemist-minecraft]

Clockwork Sun mega base on the WebSMP wip

I showed you my clock, please respond

[magichemist-minecraft]

Here are the finalized shots of the Autumn Court! My mega base from the WebSMP Season 2 server

The idea I had was autumnal fae amusement park and I think it delivered really well!

[magichemist-minecraft]

Finished my small community center for the WebSMP Season 3 server's shopping district

[magichemist-minecraft]

Got some progress shots of my mega base on the WebSMP Server. I stream all these builds at https://twitch.tv/magichemist

[magichemist-minecraft]

The lush caves on the WebSMP server needed a proper entrance, and so the ruins on poppy hill were formed