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have you taken pills with anything other than water? yes (tags) no my meds are bald

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Hey! So I’m a fairly new ambulatory wheelchair user with EDS writing about a character who is also an ambulatory wheelchair user. I feel like I keep using the same words over and over to portray movement though (rolled, propelled, “pushed themself,” etc) so I would love to hear if you have any more ideas for alternatives! I’ll take as many as you’ve got!

Thank you!!!

Hello dearest asker!

This is the list that we have provided over time plus others:

Moved/Moves

Went

Wheeled

Rolled

Pushed

Sped/Spun

Propelled

Pulled (by a service animal etc)

Maneuvered

Turn/Turned

Scoot/scooted

Travel/traveled

Rock/rocked

Drove

Crossed

Cut

Stroll/Strolled

Navigated

Drift/Drifted

Swung/swinged

Popped ("Popped up their wheels/chair" to get over a surface etc)

Tip/tipped (Tipped themselves over something etc)

Advanced

Migrate/migrated

Inched

Zoomed

Rushed

Hurried

Raced

Skid

Ram/Rammed

Roamed

Shift/Shifted

Slid (In rainy or icy weather)

Followed

Circled

And a lot of many other verbs that would take me a long time to list! Consider what type of wheelchair the person has, as mention Here. And also how the person moves or places their hands can be another detail to include.

If the actual definition of the verb doesn't involve the specific actions of one or two lower extremities (ex. walk, run, stepped, trot, stride) then it's otherwise good to use! Other words like Moseyed, sauntered, paced, I think depends on the writer. A particularly mischievous character may saunter of a manner in their wheelchair. And a character who is nervous would pace—although possibly tiring—back and forth. And Moseyed, well, I just particularly like this word—but, a character could mosey on by in a certain fashion. Happy writing!

(last ask about verb terminology on wheelchairs per this post we made about it)

~ Mod Virus 🌸

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Lucian, his best friend Logan and their spontaneous desire to eat something while sitting on the side of the road [oc]

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I know "I'm bad at summaries" and "I'm bad at tags" are not sentiments to voice in the summary/tags of a fic. But, genuinely, I don't consider myself good at either. (This is background.)

The actual question is, how do I learn these? Especially tagging. My fandom background is sparse, at least far as participation in broader fandom culture is concerned, so I wasn't part of fandom when current tagging practices on AO3 evolved. It's difficult for me to grasp, and I suspect I end up treating the tags more like CWs than search terms as a result.

Great for people who want to filter out particular unpleasant elements. Not so great for people who can't find my fic because I didn't think to tag something someone else might see as obvious. I have severe social anxiety so joining e.g. a Discord to ask for help isn't really a viable option. Tagging fic isn't worth panic attacks.

Tagging fic isn't worth panic attacks.

100% agreed!

When it comes to being "good at tagging" that definition is going to vary from person to person. It will also vary depending on what your goal is.

I'm a fairly minimal tagger myself. I'll tag the fandom and the major characters, the general vibe (e.g. humour, smut etc) and then anything else I might think of. I don't personally like to tag smut fics with all of the various sex acts in them, but I've done it before because I thought I was supposed to. Since it doesn't really feel like "me" though I've since stopped doing that. If folks want to avoid my fic as a result, that's totally fair. If folks who would like it can't find it 🤷‍♀️ maybe it'll be a rec someday.

All that is to say that tagging is not a thing it's possible to be perfect at, so just aim for accomplishing whatever your goal is.

I get what you're saying, though. I wrote a fake dating fic once without tagging it as fake dating because I didn't realize that fake dating was a trope. It was only when a couple of friends started referring to it that I realized and added that tag to my fic.

One way to learn about those kinds of tropes is to pay attention when you see them tagged on other people's fics. You can browse through tags that are similar to ones you already use and see what else people add to their fics and whether those would work for yours or not.

You can also visit Fanlore! It's another project by the OTW (the people who run AO3) and it's a great resource for learning about fandom. You can look up a common tag like Alternate Universe, and it will give you examples of different types of AU and link out to pages that will link out to pages that will... you get the idea. It's wikipedia but for fandom stuff.

As for summaries, there are a lot of ways to go about that too. I'll let folks add ideas in the notes. The way I do it is that I include the name(s) of the major character(s), and outline the inciting incident for the fic. Since I post as I write, I might or might not tease something that happens later on (because I might or might not know yet).

The way to get good at doing it is just to keep practicing. When I was in university, I took a Russian Lit course where we had to write a summary of each novel in 200 words or less, 10 sentences or less - and semicolons were cheating. I did that 13 times in 8 months, and by the end of that I was really good at writing summaries. Add in the fact that I started posting fic back on FF.net where there was a character limit on summaries and you can see why I keep them pretty short.

That's another thing that you can analyze in others' fics, though. Find a summary that you think is well-written for whatever type of summary you like and then look at that author's other fics to see if you can spot a pattern to how they do it. Once you find the pattern, it's a lot easier to replicate it and then it's just a matter of repeating it until it feels natural.

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trying to read a dai meta when ur inquisitor isn’t a fem!lavellan

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i am afraid of people who reblog things with no tags. not even any identifiers like the show it’s from or anything. just silence. what are you thinking?? hello??

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the REAL ao3 author's curse is not being able to become irl friends with my favorite commenters

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if there’s a chronically ill person in your life and they aren’t telling you about how much better they’re feeling or the amazing improvements they’ve been making, it’s probably because they are not feeling better and aren’t making improvements. They are probably feeling like shit. And if you continue to ask said chronically ill person if they’re feeling better every time you see them , they will be deeply annoyed.

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that "OKAY SO" before someone u love starts infodumping........ most blessed feeling in the world

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someone: luke skywalker beat darth vader and ended the empire

everyone else in the galaxy:

everyone on tatooine:

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Tumblr is good for creative types because the tag system lets you be truly deranged about how much you like it without feeling as Exposed as a Comment Section

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Honestly part of the problem with this obsession with only consuming unproblematic fiction is that people are less likely to acknowledge when something is harmful. If you so much as say hey this one joke in this one episode was offensive fans will write you an essay on why it wasn’t. Because they’ve created a world view where this is basically accusing them of being a bad person who has committed an unforgivable sin.

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wingull becomes exponentially better when you remove the wings

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To avoid deer strikes, Finland is painting deer antlers with reflective paint.