Describing Tricks

by Crazy Ivan

As many of you know, I've been doing a bit of work this week updating the Tricktionary section of this blog.  Over the last couple of days I've added more than a hundred entries along with links to the Trick of the Day videos that I've done for those moves.  Starting yesterday, I moved on to the harder part of the ordeal; writing the descriptions of each move.

Now, for a few tricks, you can get everything out in a few words.  Take the Hulk as an example; "Toss the Myachi up and catch it between your fists".  In a scant 10 words I've essentially told you everything you need to know about that move.  Sure, I can add a few more words of advice to that.  I could warn you about not punching too hard in case you miss the Myachi, I can specify that you want to use the portion of your fingers between the first and second row of knuckles, I could even add a gag line in there about what kind of sound effects you want to make, but by and large, a simple sentence encapsulates the move.

But that is only true of a minority of Myachi tricks.  Most of them require a full paragraph or two to describe and some of them start sounding downright confusing when you put them into words.  A classic example of this is the Snake.  It's a relatively simple looking move, but the best description I can put together for it is:

Starting with the hand in a fist and the Myachi resting between the 2^nd and 3^rd row of knuckles, rotate the forearm and (right) hand in a counter-clockwise direction. In total, the arm will make two full counter-clockwise rotations, the first under the armpit and the second over the shoulder. When done properly, the Myachi will stay on the same spot on the hand throughout the motion.

As confusing as that sounds, I would guess that if you had nothing to go on but that paragraph you could try a hundred times and never actually figure out what you were trying to do.  You might wind up with some strange mutation of the move, but you probably wouldn't be able to figure out exactly what I was talking about.

In the early days of Myachi the Internet was not very conducive to sharing Myachi tricks.  Uploading videos was a pain and even when you did it was at such a pathetic frame rate that you wouldn't really follow a complex move.  On the website we had back in 2004 (my first year with Myachi) there were videos, but they were all but useless.  The video of the 360 contained 4 frames.  In one you saw a toss, in the next the hand was over top of the Myachi, in the next you saw a catch and in the final frame you saw a look of predictable accomplishment.

If you had nothing to go on except that video, you could think that a 360 was just a matter of tossing the Myachi up, waving hello and then catching it.  You might not even realize the hand was orbiting around the Myachi.  Of course, right next to the video was a brief description in text and since the 360 is a pretty easy move to explain we weren't too worried about the low quality of the video.

But this was a huge limiting factor.  Even a move as basic as the Wolverine was almost impossible to share online.

And then, in late 2005, YouTube came along and made video uploads easy and accessible.  That really changed everything for us.  I often wonder if Myachi could have ever reached the level it has had it not been for sites like YouTube.  I wonder how much longer it might have taken, how much harder it might have been if we'd started this company in the 80s.

So when you're reading a move described in the Tricktionary and you're left scratching your head at a sentence like:  Keeping your hands extended outward, cross your strong hand over the wrist of your weak arm and trap the Myachi between both flat hands, just sigh and remember to be thankful for YouTube and web 2.0.