A Readers’ Guide To The Library - Part 3
Hope the Readers’ Guides have been helping you so far. If you’re seeing this post for the first time, please check out the previous posts.
This is the third and final installment in our guide. Here we deal with how to navigate the tags.
Clicking on the tags icon on the home page takes you to the tags page.
Here, in the red bounding circles, are icon for -
Home - which takes you to the Library’s home page
Tags Guide - which is basically here. Recommended to all first time visitors to check this out so you have a basic idea about how the tags work.
Dashboard - your tumblr dashboard.
The main tag headings are in the big bounding box. Clicking on one of the headings opens up a pop up page where the sub headings under that category are
The blog follows the standard AO3 rating system - Not rated, G, T, M and E ratings. All ratings are as per author’s ratings. Our FAQ page has more details about the ratings.
In order to make it easy to navigate, fics are separated based on their word count:
One shot : these are short fics that don’t really fall into any genre categories.
Quick read - Want to quickly read a fic while waiting somewhere? Or need to kill some time? These are short fics that you can quickly read while waiting in the doctor’s office or in the grocery store line.
Angst - Heavy painful fics that will make you cry
Fluff - Adorableness that will have you grinning like an idiot
Humour - Ranging from ‘quietly smiling to yourself at the cheeky idiots’ to ‘rolling on the floor laughing’
Action/Adventure - fics that are heavily action packed, even by superhero standards
Drama - because what is life without a little bit of drama
Hurt/Comfort - physical, mental, and/or emotional comfort
Plot what plot - or where the author drops all pretenses of a plot and gives you pure porn
Smut - Where the sex is only a part of the story.
5+1 things - written in the format of 5+1, though not necessarily the same numbers.
These tags act more as filters than as navigation tags. These are triggers that people generally don’t want to read about or at least want a warning from before.
NSFW - Fics with more than usual explicit sex, with acts that people might generally not be comfortable with.
 Pre Avengers - in a setting before the Avengers movie, either as a speculation fic or one that disregards canon
Avengers canon - Set during Avengers, either as a missing scene, or partway canon, and starts diverging from canon midway from the movie
post Avengers - fics set after the avengers, taking into account the events of the movie. Doesn’t take CATWS into account, and therefore different from the next category
pre CATWS - In a setting before CATWS, either as a speculation fic or a prequel to the movie. It is different from fics set post Avengers.
CATWS canon - missing scene from the movie
post CATWS - set in the aftermath of the movie, or as a sequel to it, disregarding AOU.
pre AOU- Speculation fics for the movie, or those acting as a prequel to AOU
AOU canon - missing scenes from the movie, or diverging from canon partway through the movie, or events of the movie but with a Romanogers pairing.
post AOU - set post AOU, sequel to AOU, or diverging from canon post the movie.
pre civil war - Spec fics for the movie.
canon divergence - fics disregarding movie/comic canon
future fic - Set some time in the future, or generally has a pre established relationship. The fics can also be of indeterminate timeline.
Alternate Universe - characters of the MCU set in a different universe.
POV doesn’t necessarily mean using ‘I’. A story from Natasha’s POV is her side of the story. She doesn’t have to narrate it. Same with Steve. A story from both their POVs is describing the same scene, or different scenes at the same time, through both their eyes. 3rd person’s POV means another person looking in on their relationship. So when the story is from Tony or Clint or even from a random bystander’s pov.
James Rogers - fics that are set in a future timeline where Romanogers has a son - James Rogers
Undercover - fics with undercover operations, generally with them being in a fake relationship for the job
20th century - time period setting
Different First Meeting - ones where they meet differently than in canon
High school/College - in a high school/college setting where the characters are either students or teachers or a mix of both
Different profession - where they are not spies of SHIELD
Small things that define a fic.
Steve needs a 21st century education
Caring for the sick - where one is sick and the other nurses them
Hope that was comprehensive enough for you. If you have any more questions, feel free to message us!
So you have a library full of awesome fics at your disposal now! Do spread the word!
