#Blaugust2022 – Who is Magi anyway?

So, after my meltdown yesterday, I decided to go with a different idea. Let’s talk less about my past struggles and more about me right now. I feel like I need to work on my past experiences and write them out but I’m just not ready for that step yet and that’s fine. Instead, I wrote a post in the past where I tried to introduce myself.

That post didn’t quite age so well. It’s riddled with typos and it isn’t really telling much about me, in my opinion, especially because it has been three years. So, without further ado, let’s get into it.

Since I discovered anchors with the help of Easha from the Blaugust Discord, I’ll include that in a second. You can skip to certain parts that interest you more than others this way… Enjoy!

Who is Magi anyway?

So, hey, I’m “Magi”. I also go by “Dan” online, not because that’s my actual name but rather because it just came to be that I got called that. I mean, it’s a syllable and it works. I get called that a lot offline as well, mostly because people forget my real name. It’s tricky after all… and most people need an easy way out when they struggle with pronunciation.

I’m a blogger and streamer from Germany. I was born and raised here. My parents, however, are from Kosovo, meaning that I’m Albanian. I talked about this a while ago but I don’t identify as either really… or I do technically but when I go to Kosovo, I’m “jashtit” (not sure how to decline that word, lol) which means “from the outside”.

That term is mostly used to talk smack about people that live outside their country. It’s a whole thing, actually. I know for a fact that there are similar terms in other countries and cultures. There is this whole myth that everyone in Germany is rich and that you earn tons of money by doing nothing when in reality, the money you earn goes away faster than you can accumulate it. In Kosovo, for instance, you may earn less but you also spend a lot less on groceries.

So, I don’t feel at home in my “home country” but in my home town, I was also a foreigner. I wasn’t German, after all, and I was frequently just that. When it was in their favour, I’d be praised for being a good example of integration. When it was about me getting into an argument or me being bullied or beaten up, I was shouted at by teachers for “not integrating myself”. It’s not even the worst story I have. That shit is mild.

I never felt like I had a voice. I was shy and introverted and always an outsider. After being bullied for years and years, I struggled a lot – and I still do. I’m a mess. I guess a reason why I keep blogging is that it makes me feel like I do have a voice and I know some people enjoy reading my stuff here, so I keep at it. It’s a big motivation for me.

I only much later got to make friends in my high school years who practically saved me. Who knows where I’d be now if it weren’t for them? Among us friends, it became a meme that my steam library was super huge, so I got asked for recommendations a lot and ended up recommending cool games I found to friends.

Just to clarify, I used to (and still do) grab all the freebies I found on the internet. That’s why the backlog keeps getting bigger. Eventually, friends suggested that I’d start a blog and recommend games to others, so I did. I wrote a few reviews on “Magis Indiekativ” – a blog I took down after a few months since Blogspot was really hard to work with… and also, someone doxed and harassed me on the internet.

So, fast forward a few years, and here I am, blogging for three years. I love doing this. I get to learn a lot, read a lot and write a lot. It helps me mentally but I also get to make friends with similar interests, learn about their lives, and have a good time because of it.

Other interests I have apart from Indie Games and Blogging include cooking, baking, reading, writing (like short stories), Anime and Manga, meeting up with friends, parties, Debate Club, and other sorts of stuff. I’m a basic bitch.

I used to do Kendo for three years as well as Iaido and Iodo. I also did Muay Thai for a while but stopped due to my upcoming move to this city. Currently, I also work out at the Gym and try to build up my stamina while also working on my posture. Otherwise, I used to Drama but I no longer have the time for that, which is a bummer.

Streaming on Twitch kind of took the place of Drama though as I get to be this “Lich” and create a backstory and whatnot which is quite a lot of fun. I also can pretend that I’m good at games but it doesn’t always work. More than anything, I enjoy chatting with people, drawing stuff on stream, and exploring Indie Games. It’s a big passion of mine.

The Origin Story of “MagiWasTaken”

I go by “Magi” or “MagiWasTaken” online because I used that nickname for ages now. When I was younger (around 3 or 4?), I knew how to spell “Magier” (mage in German) and entered that in a game… but it only let me enter four letters. So, I was “Magi”. Eventually, I added “mos” to it, thinking “Magimos” sounds cool. Fast forward to when I was 16 or 17 and I just didn’t think so anymore… But I couldn’t come up with something else. In fact, my friends at the time called me “Magi” (as in “Magical” but without the “cal”) anyway, so I stuck with that but the “mos” was just out of place.

Eventually, I noticed how my username was taken and then… that was my username. MagiWasTaken. Yup. That’s the origin story. And I stuck with it.

In Online Games and MMOs where you play a character of sorts, I would often play as a female character as opposed to a male character. In GuildWars 2, that human Engineer was called “Lizz Winterfield”. It sounded pretty “Human” and way more fitting anyway. “Lizz” is just a name that I find pretty and “Winterfield” comes from a sniper weapon in “Blinx – The Time Sweepers”, a game I played on the OG Xbox.

So, whenever I play a character that is female, it’s “Lizz Winterfield”.

Weirdly enough, my Spotify name is that because my other Spotify account got hacked or something (but it didn’t have payment options linked to it, so it’s all good).

Magi and Video Games

My first-ever interactions with video games were probably Tetris on one of those handhelds that only have Tetris on them. You know? I also played Snake on my parents’ Nokia phones… and that was cool.

Eventually, I got an N64. I was maybe three or four years old but I still remember the day I saw it high up on a shelf and my father bought it for me as well as Super Mario 64, Mario Party 64, and Pokémon Puzzle League. I remember my father getting scolded for that purchase but it made me happy and my mother was okay with it as long as I don’t spend too much time playing video games.

As a kid, I got “tested” a lot. I knew how to do math in kindergarten already. I was able to multiply numbers and calculate stuff that was quite tricky and I’d frequently ask my parents for exercises that I then would solve. I also would write my name on a piece of paper but mirrored.

One of the doctors said that there is nothing wrong with me. Also, my parents were told to stop giving me math exercises or else I’d get bored in elementary school and then I would give up on Math completely.

So, no more math for me, but I spent a lot of time with SM64 and Pokémon Puzzle League, which is possibly one of the best Pokémon games ever and I hope they release a new version of it, just like how they did with Pokémon Snap! It was GREAT. Also, I played Mario Party with friends and my father a lot.

One of my deepest traumas probably comes from that huge eel in Super Mario 64. It freaked me out and I wouldn’t learn how to swim up until much much later because of how scared I was of the water… frigging eel.

Eventually, my uncle gave us a used OG Xbox that he got from a friend. My three younger siblings and I would eventually play Blinx 2 together as well as other titles such as Timesplitters 2 (my mom didn’t know about that), Jet Set Radio, Fable, Sonic Heroes, and other games.

Eventually, my uncle “modified” the Xbox to have something installed with a lot of other games… yup. At the time, I didn’t know that that’s not a good thing to do but hey, uh, mistakes are made?

Around 2008 was when we got our first computer at home. Up until then, I heard about “the internet” but I had no clue what that is supposed to be. Back then, I played a lot of flash games… I also played Sonic Adventure DX, Oblivion, and Beyond Good and Evil – which would be my first-ever PC Games, actually.

Much later, in 2011-ish, the Minecraft craze began and I was able to find friends to play Minecraft with. At the time, I didn’t understand what could be fun about building with blocks… but then I got hooked as well.

Eventually, later, I got a Nintendo DS – but to earn it, I needed to have a lot of As and whatnot which took me quite a while to accomplish. That was when I first got in touch with Pokémon. The Pokémon Games were amazing.

My absolute favourite game of all time, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky, came out at the time and I played the heck out of that. It was also the first game that ever made me cry. While I did play Ocarina of Time on the N64, I enjoyed Spirit Tracks way more on the NDS.

Another series that I also enjoyed a lot was Spectrobes, as I loved the idea of digging up fossils, reviving them, and raising them to be very powerful. This may have been what sparked this passion I have for Necromancy and Summoning in video games.

And well, eventually, I had my own laptop since fighting over one PC was too much for four siblings. I did create a Steam Account in 2014-ish but I didn’t have the funds to buy any games…

With the laptop and my first job as a waiter, I suddenly had access to video games and more importantly, Indie Games. I also played a lot of League of Legends around the time and Team Fortress 2 when I got into Steam more… my first ever purchases were The Binding of Isaac as well as Rain World, I believe. I later got Nuclear Throne as well and Don’t Starve/Don’t Starve Together.

Those were probably my first-ever Indie Games, although I may have to check that again at some point in another post.

Want to know more? Let me know!

I wrote about me and the blog already on the About Page and that other post and now here… but some of this may not be as detailed as people may want it to be. If you have any questions, I can write another post or we can chat about it in the comments. I plan on writing another post like this on the matters eventually… but I’m not sure how many people are that interested in me, haha. But I do hope that you enjoyed this.

This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well. If you find this post on a website other than Indiecator.org, please write an e-mail to me. Thank you!