Dreaming of Sunshine (fandom)
| Fandom | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Dreaming of Sunshine |
| Abbreviation(s): | DoS |
| Creator: | Silver Queen |
| Date(s): | 09/2011–ongoing |
| Medium: | online |
| Country of Origin: | |
| External Links: | on fanfiction.net |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Dreaming of Sunshine is a popular Naruto SI OC fanfiction by Silver Queen with an active recursive fandom.
Canon
Main canonical texts are Dreaming of Sunshine and Sunshine Sidestories, but sometimes Reincarnation Roulette as well. Silver Queen has had a lot of contact with the fandom, and details and characters from recursive fanfiction sometimes make their way into the main story.
Fandom
Dreaming of Sunshine fans come from a wide variety of backgrounds — various levels of familiarity with the Naruto canon and wider Naruto fandom exist, although the fandom skews towards people who are dissatisfied with the Naruto ending and its sequel, never finished the series, or, in some cases, never engaged with Naruto canon at all. People often come to Dreaming of Sunshine after they run out of time travel fics to read.
Because of Silver Queen's focus on exploration in her fic, many fans in the recursive community engage in speculation on mechanics, world building, plot, and characterization, arguably all things that Naruto itself was terrible at. A comment on the forums in response to Chapter 102/101 gives a good example of all four:
I'm really curious about the differences between her seal and actually performing a transformation jutsu as far as chakra usage and duration of illusion are concerned. Perhaps seal-jutsu resist ordinary dispelling/tracking measures used for transformations? Or perhaps Shikako is banking on them not trying to disrupt the transformation at all?
That aside, looking into the social dynamics of special jounin is really interesting. The way they boast about injuries, opponents, rankings. The setting. No wonder quiet, modest Shikako feels out of place. It makes me wonder whether the jounin do the same thing. Heck, it makes me wonder whether there are more jounin or special jounin. There are more named jounin than special jounin according to the wiki, iirc. But is that sampling bias?
As for the bunker: I'm predicting that it's actually one of Orochimaru's. How would Rock get access to Fire country soil so close to an outpost?
Either way, I'm guessing that Shikako continues to completely underestimate her abilities. That sensing job looked significantly harder than anything she's shown to have been done previously. Either the Sensory Squad makes quick work of training new members or she really is just that good. Either way, this might have implications for any war with Rock -- and she's already made a name for herself there. I suppose it's tradition for new seal masters to completely stomp all over them.[1]
On the forums, shipping is gently shuffled into the shipping thread[2] and discussing it is forbidden elsewhere because no one has time for being derailed. The Discord server doesn't have a designated shipping channel because none of the mods wanted to deal with having to moderate that.
Communities and Culture
Much of the development of the recursive fandom has come out of the fanfiction.net forum, We're all just Dreaming of Sunshine which was started in 2015. In 2017 support for a Discord server grew. The Discord server We're all just Dreaming of Sunshine began as an offshoot of the forums with all of the same moderators, but soon developed into its own community. In mid-2019, wafflelate started a second Discord server, Heliocentric, after leaving the WajDoS server.
Dreaming of Sunshine communities tend to enforce a T rating in public discussions, see recursive fic as a 'gift' to the community, and assume default blanket permission for recursive fanfiction, remixes, and other transformative works. These things were first codified in the forum's rules thread in 2017[3] and carried over to other spaces such as the Discord server and the reddit.
Recursive fanfiction collections
Silver Queen curates a fanfiction.net community, Heliocentrism, which was started on March 17, 2015. As of 2018, it has 91 stories and 258 followers and accepts "sidestories, spin-offs, translations, anything related!"[4] There are no staff members besides Silver Queen, so users must notify her of a new recursive fic when they post it if they want their story to be included.
On Archive of Our Own there's a collection by the same name: Heliocentrism - a Dreaming of Sunshine recursive collection. The collection is open and unmoderated, so anyone can add their work.[5] The Dreaming of Sunshine fandom tag is currently synned to the Naruto fandom tag, so this is the best way to find Dreaming of Sunshine recursive fanfiction there.
The first scene of recursive fanfiction post on the forums was in the general thread in August 2015[6] although speculation about recursive fic started pretty much immediately, including fans wanting metafic.[7]
Common Tropes
Along with other common Naruto tropes, the DoS fandom has some specific tropes and trends. Shimura Danzou is a common antagonist and Shikako being pulled into ROOT is a common AU. Outsider POV fics are very popular.
Pre!Kako
In a trend started by SatelliteFool's fic Pre!Kako, "in which Shikako is born to Yoshino and Shikaku six years earlier than one might expect", fics sometimes explore what would have happened if Shikako was Shikamaru's older sister instead of his twin. JJ1293's fic focuses on Shikako as Uchiha Itachi's genin teammate.
Gardens fic
Gardens fic stem from wafflelate's The Many Gardens of Shikabane-hime, wherein Shikako has a sealing accident and struggles to get home while traveling through many alternate universes. wafflelate created it to make it easy for others to write dimension-hopping stories. Fanworks often focus on letting Shikako meet people who are dead in Dreaming of Sunshine, like Namikaze Minato and Hatake Sakumo.
Alternate Reincarnation
Many DoS fans enjoy speculating and writing fic about what would have happened if Shikako had been reborn into a different family, place, and/or time. This is also the subject of Silver Queen's Reincarnation Roulette.
Crossovers
Crossovers with various fandoms are popular, including Avatar: The Last Airbender, Boku no Hero Academia, and Star Wars, and the crossovers almost always focus on Shikako. This sometimes involves an alternate or further reincarnation (Shikako being reborn as Midoriya Izuku's twin, for example) but also sometimes Shikako crosses dimensions.
Shipping
Dreaming of Sunshine is a gen fanfiction and gen fic is very popular, but shippers do exist. Popular pairings skew towards het (because they usually involve Nara Shikako) and include:
- Uchiha Sasuke/Shikako
- Uzumaki Naruto/Shikako
- Hatake Kakashi/Shikako
- Haku/Shikako
- Yamanaka Ino/Shikako
- Uchiha Shisui/Shikako (because of The Many Gardens of Shikabane-hime)
Platonic versions of the above are also popular subjects of fanfiction, as well as Shikako's relationship with Yamashiro Aoba, Kankurou, Sai, Morino Ibiki, and her family, especially Nara Shikamaru, her twin.
Fanworks
- The Many Gardens of Shikabane-hime by wafflelate
- Underneath the Shifting Sands[1] by witchbreaker
- Pre!Kako by SatelliteFool
References
- ^ Asymmetric, General DoS thread on DoS forum, page 12 post #349 Posted Sep 25, 2015.
- ^ ByeByeBriar, General DoS thread on DoS forum, page 21 post #611 Posted Nov 12, 2015.
- ^ MathIsMagic, Forum Rules and Information #1 (archived). Posted 22 Jan 2017, last edited 01 Feb 2018. (Accessed 11 July 2018.)
- ^ Heliocentrism on Fanfiction.net, a collection of recursive fanfiction for Dreaming of Sunshine. (Accessed 11 July 2018.)
- ^ on archiveofourown.org, a collection of recursive fanfiction for Dreaming of Sunshine. (Accessed 11 July 2018.)
- ^ gillamor, General DoS thread on DoS forum, page 5 post #128 Posted Aug 19, 2015.
- ^ tylerbamafan34, General DoS thread on DoS forum, page 1 post #15 Posted Jun 28, 2015.
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