The tag alias #47024 being_carried -> carrying_another has been approved.

Reason: The tags seem functionally identical. carrying also serves as a better catch-all than holding_character (which is specifically for "when a character is holding a smaller character in a hand, tentacle, or some similar appendage").

EDIT: The tag alias being_carried -> carrying (forum #295295) has been approved by @Millcore.

Seems fine to me. Although some of the posts under being_carried and being_held should probably also receive holding_character (and size_difference). Of course, that'll have to be done manually.

If I get the time, and it's not already done, I might go through some of them, but not tonight.

While we're here, carrying partner also exists. As it stands, it's identical to carrying, but if things were ever reworked, carrying could be used for holding any kind of thing, and carrying partner could be implied to it instead.

strikerman said:
While we're here, carrying partner also exists. As it stands, it's identical to carrying, but if things were ever reworked, carrying could be used for holding any kind of thing, and carrying partner could be implied to it instead.

I'm torn on that, honestly. On the one hand, I want to say that we don't really need an umbrella tag for holding both characters and inanimate objects. On the other, I can understand if people find carrying to be too vague to be kept with only carrying characters. And it makes more sense to me to make it an umbrella tag than to disambiguate it.

If carrying becomes an umbrella tag for holding anything, I'd say maybe alias/imply all of the character related carrying to carrying_other or carrying_another. Carrying_partner has more posts, sure, but that, to me, sounds more like a sex or romance related tag, as opposed to just general carrying. Maybe that's just me though.

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As was pointed out in topic #27223, lifted and lifting also exist, and... The more I look into all the various tags that exist for holding someone or something, the more I realize there's not just one simple fix for it all.

Lift_(disambiguation) insists that lifting and carrying are two different tags and should not be confused, and yet I've seen no reasoning for this. They seem, to me, to be exactly the same.

These tags are a mess and I'm not entirely sure what to do with many of them. Some of them should probably be kept, like cradling, as that's fairly specific, but should be implicated someplace. Others need to be aliased, although I'm not entirely sure which to where with many of them. There's also likely to be tags I've missed that also need to be aliased away or cleaned up.

This whole thing has also made me wonder: Should certain sexual acts/positions also implicate carrying (or whatever tag replaces carrying for characters, specifically)? Things like stand_and_carry_position, or the much smaller lift_job? What about riding and riding_sidesaddle (which really should probably implicate riding to begin with)?

The tag alias being_carried -> carrying (forum #295295) has been approved by @Millcore.