Classifying Tricks

by Crazy Ivan

How many types of tricks are there?

Seems more like the kind of question you would ask me than something I would ask you, right?  Seems like I should be able to toss out a quick number and a list and move on to another question, right?  Seems like developing some sort of classification system for all the Myachi tricks would be pretty easy, right?

By now you've probably guess that I'm going to say wrong, but I'm going to say it anyway...

Wrong.

There are a couple of things that make this task difficult but the biggest by far is the fact that new tricks are being invented every day.  Most of those tricks are logical extensions on other tricks, but from time to time something comes up that is so unique that you're left scratching your head and wondering where it goes.

But that's only one of the problems that we face when we start trying to answer that question.  Rather than drag you through each of them one by one, let me demonstrate with a few real world examples.

Years ago I thought I pretty much had it all figured out.  We had divided the tricks into 8 basic categories and even though some of the categories were kind of weird and had rambling definitions, everything fit.  We'd named it several different ways including dividing tricks up by elements, kung fu animal forms, directions and regions of the country where the style developed.  Most of that got pretty confusing so usually we just used descriptive terms.

So circa 2006 these were the 8 categories as were more or less officially recognized by the Myachi community:

• Aerials: These are tricks where some part of your body moves in relation to the Myachi while the Myachi is in the air.  As confusing as that may sound, it's pretty simple.  This is essentially any move where you toss the Myachi up and then do something before catching it.  Think 360, Wolverine, Butterfly, Illusion, etc.
• Traps: These are tricks where you trap the Myachi between two parts of your body.  This includes your Hulk, Lotus, X-Treme, etc.  Technically this also includes the Slingshot since you're trapping between your biceps and forearm.
• Strikes: Pretty self explanatory, but these are moves where you strike the Myachi.  This includes the obvious stuff like your Kicks, Knee Pops and Poppers but it also includes the some favorites like the Trampoline and the Tailwhip.
• Stalls: Again, the name pretty much says it all.  These are tricks where you catch the Myachi on any surface of your body.  Most of the classification systems divide this into 2 categories to differentiate between upper and lower body stalls.
• Centrifugals: Kinds of a weird one here, but these are tricks where the Myachi stays in one place as your body moves.  Seems at first like it would be a small category, but it includes stuff like the Snake, the Vert, the Half Pipe, the Cradle, the Roller Coaster and the Helix so obviously it needed a category.
• Body Crosses: This is actually a pretty clumsy category but it basically revolves around moves where the Myachi or a part of your body crosses another part of your body.  That's a fancy way of trying to include all the weird Behind the Back and Under the Leg variations but it also includes moves like the Bandit and the Under the Arm catch (more on that later).
• Spins: This category basically hung out as an afterthought but there were too many tricks that fit into it to ignore them.  These refer to tricks that involve the Myachi itself spinning or flipping.  While most of us don't spend much time on these tricks, all the skate varieties and Impossible variations had to fit in somewhere.

And that was pretty much the whole thing in 2006.  The really observant folks out there will have noticed that I said 8 categories and only listed 7, but the stall category was always split in half in the past so all eight are actually explained above.

At the time this seemed pretty all encompassing.  Sure, there were a few moves that didn't exactly fit.  We couldn't decide exactly where the Daredevil went but we forced it into the Body Cross category.  We did the same for the In-Spin even though it didn't really involve anything crossing anything.

There were a few others that we fudged at the time.  Grinding wasn't a very big part of the game but the Dark Slide was already a popular move so we revamped the "Centrifugal" category to just say "Any move where the Myachi stays on your body the whole time" so that all grinds would fit into it.  Of course, this brought up confusion about whether the Impossible belonged in that category or not.

Another big question was something like the Cold Fusion.  It's not really covered anywhere above.  You'd kind of have to put it in the category of body crosses since it's just one under the arm followed by another but the Cold Fusion doesn't really belong in the same category as Under the Leg and Reverse Behind the Back.  It's about coordination, not flexibility.

The same question comes up for the Fu, the Flow or any variation of Fusion.  At first we though this was a minor problem but as more and more Fusion variations evolved (think Confusion, Infusion, Diffusion, Illusion Fusion, Subter-Fusion... you get my drift) we saw it becoming a monster.

Eventually, a ninth category was added called swaps:

• Swaps: These are moves in which you swap the Myachi from one hand to the other in a pattern or prescribed way.

At about the same time, we had to add yet another category for an emerging branch of tricks called:

• Portals: These refer to any move where the Myachi passes through a closed hole or "portal" that you make with one or more parts of your body.  The Musketeer is one of the most common examples, but moves like the Wormhole, the Swordfish and the Thinker also belong in this category.

But even upping it to 10 categories wasn't really solving the problem.  While we were still trying to figure out where multi-Myachi tricks fit into the grander scheme of things (after all, there are multi-Myachi versions of almost every trick) and whether a Daredevil was really a Body Cross (this debate continues to rage), new tricks like the Flying Fish were popping up just to drive us insane (currently loosely classified as a Strike).

Of course, as the game grows this becomes a less and less academic debate.  Back in the day it was just something to talk about while you recouped your strength for more Dragon Fly practice but now these classifications really matter to tournament MYACH players and aficionados of the game.

A large work on the subject is forthcoming and will appear on the "Pages" section on the right side of the blog.  It's almost completed so unless something huge comes up it will probably be done this week but it will be long and complicated.  I wanted to put this blog out for all to see so that you would understand why it was so complicated when you did see it.

As strange as the guys in the little white coats think it is, we're pretty serious about all aspects of Myachi, even the taxonomy of our tricks.