I made a post on the SRK Makoto forum, as I sometimes do, and I made a post I thought was pretty good *vanity*. Mostly because until I wrote it down I never knew that that's how I thought about it. Weird how writing things down makes them look different than in your head. Here's what it said.

To me a mixup is a guessing game where in a somewhat common situation you have a set of options that (for the most part) must be countered differently. DP's have a way to kill mixups in that they counter multiple options. Option selects do the same. That's neither here nor there though. Fighter theory go! Anyway, to me gimmicks are those techniques (usually risky) that are quite far from the expected/normal way of playing that they catch ppl off-guard. However, since everything can be countered and a gimmick is by definition (MY definition) a single technique, it will only work so often until people escape or counter it. In turn, you can counter their escape or counter attempt (usually) with another technique. In fact, MAKING it a mixup. So it's really just apples and oranges.

for example, empty jump > throw, people have been doing it since forever, because since parries came into the world AA'ing was no longer safe. So, people started teching that stuff like it was the only thing to do, now you have empty jump Abare as an option to you. Sure, it's a desperately high-stakes game of guessing AND so many things can go wrong. My point however is that empty jump > SA2 is a gimmick by itself, but empty jump > throw and empty jump > SA2 together are a mixup. Not a good one, not without ways of escaping, but a mixup nontheless.

That kind of sheds some light on how I view Makoto's playstyle. I sometimes hear people complain about 'random Makoto b#llsh%t' as though it's something stupid that takes no skill and could fail as much as it could succeed. I think people feel robbed of a win when losing to something like empty jump > SA2, when in reality it's just the opponent taking advantage of their preconceived expectations. Nothing wrong with that if you ask me. On the other hand, I don't feel I trick my opponents as much as other Makoto players do. I play, in general, a more conservative Makoto. I'm not into dashing too much nor do I like to follow up a Hayate with short into another Hayate simply because I believe the payoff isn't enough. Be that true or not, I realise Makoto comes across as being random because she is a character that, similar to grapplers, requires more guessing and knowledge of your opponent's options to win than better characters that are able to impose their play-style onto others.