Yeah, they are like that. I've had to polish my accent just to get them give me the time of day.

[He was frowning irritably at the memory. No matter how hard he worked, there were still odd moments he sounded like a working-class guy from the shores of the Thames just outside London. Classism was real, even in his timeline. ]

During my last year of school, I actually wrote my thesis on the possibilities and applications of Magecraft in the modern era. They just laughed it off, because my core point was that Magecraft didn't need to be limited to bloodlines and familial legacies.

[A shrug. It was still a sour memory, but it was what catalyzed so many of his decisions from that time that still affected his life. Dropping out to run across the world to fight against other mages and spell casters was of them.]

I guess they didn't like the idea of modern science and analysis taking away the inherent mystery of it all. Not that the workings we can accomplish is even a fraction of the magic from ancient times.

Alchemy is one example. Modern chemistry peeled away layers of the mysteries and made them mundane. Fact without the folklore and history is just numbers on a page-- without character.

I suppose that's the difference.