Pokémon Shipping memories - AMA about Shipping in the fandom back in the late 90s and early 2000s

[Archaic]

With this being an anniversary year for the Pokémon franchise, I've found myself on a bit of a fandom history kick lately. And one area that I think deserves a lot more attention is Shipping, and how significant that has been historically to the online Pokémon fandom.

Records of the early years of Pokémon Shipping are rather disjointed, thanks to so many of the old websites and forums having long since died, with only fragmentary records from the Web Archive, and individual backups taken by select Shippers. Few of the original Shippers remain active in the fandom either, meaning there's vanishingly few opportunities for even oral histories to be passed down. But... we're not gone entirely yet.

For those of you who don't know (which I presume is probably most of you at this point), Shipping is where I first made my name in this fandom. As head of Official PokéShippers (OPS), I was essentially the figurehead leader of all PokéShippers involved in the shipping debates of the early fandom. I was also the original archivist of the (In)Complete List of Ships, which in the many many many years since I passed on the reins has become what is now known as Neverending Romance: The Incomplete Nightmare. My activity in Shipping was a significant factor behind me getting my first mod role on the Anime forum on the original Bulbagarden Forums (back in our .com era), and it's safe to say that had I nmot been involved in shipping, I wouldn't be here in this fandom today... and nor would Bulbagarden or Bulbapedia.

So... what would you like to know about how Shipping was in the early days of the fandom? Ask me anything, and I'll try to answer as best as I can.

 

[recarmdra]

i'm honestly curious as to where fanworks were hosted. when i started using the internet, most people had already moved on to sites like deviantart for artwork, and fanfiction.net for fan fiction. of course, those aren't the most popular sites anymore, but i'm totally clueless as to what it was like before those sites.

so, did people host their fanwork on forums like some of us in this community, or did they make dedicated websites for them? were there webrings or something similar? did someone attempt to aggregate pokémon fanfiction on a fansite? if so, are any of those websites still up or archived?

i know this is a pretty long question, so there's no rush in answering it.
i'm also curious as to what the most popular pairing was, and if any flame wars ensued lol.

 

[Archaic]

Fanfiction.net launched back in 1998, and it was absolutely a major hub for fanworks even early in its life. Having said that, it certainly wasn't the only place fics got posted. There were at least two general Pokémon fanfiction sites that existed at various points, though I've long since forgotten their names, along with many specialist websites that would only post fics within a specific genre or a specific Ship. If you really wanted the most up to date stuff, you were probably going to forums or Fanfiction.net though. The smaller fan sites didn't have any automated processes in place, so the website owners would need to manually add every submission, which might not happen every day or even every week depending on the volume of submissions they had to deal with.

There were absolutely web-rings of Pokémon fansites at the beginning, though honestly those faded out fairly quickly, once sites started to prefer doing direct affiliations and links.

The most popular pairing was probably RocketShipping, simply because it was a Ship practically everyone agreed on. PokéShipping would be a close second, though those numbers were boosted simply from the large numbers of fans who didn't really consider themselves Shippers. PalletShipping was the most active and vocal in comparison to their size in respect to the fandom as a whole. Within the major forums, they were pretty much as numerous as PokéShippers among the "serious" Shippers who participated in Shipping debates.

As for Flame Wars.... they were era defining. I was one of the signatories of the Pact of Pallet, a formal peace treaty between Official PokéShippers and PalletShippers International that brought an end to the massive debates and flame wars between those two ships that characterised much of the Shipping fandom from 1999 to 2001.

 

[ii kanji]

Any memories you can share of ye olde Rocketshipping fandom would be appreciated. I only “found” the internet circa 2006 when people were already fondly reminiscing about the good old times

Also very happy to read more about any and all historic fandom beef lol. Any personal favourite fights or kooky characters from back then?

 

[Kathylikestoread]

What was the main Ash ship before AmourShipping and Serena were created?

 

[Daren]

I didn't really engage in the fandom until much later but I was reading forums, fics, and so on from close to day 1 of the English community. So I have memories.

What was the main Ash ship before AmourShipping and Serena were created?

In the early days there were really two, as Archaic noted; Pokéshipping (Ash and Misty) and Palletshipping (Ash and Gary). Anecdotally I think the former was bigger, but Palletshipping was a major force in the Original Series era. A decent number of fanfic would throw in Pokéshipping very casually.

The other big one was Jessie and James, Rocketshipping. If anything I'd say it showed up even more casually than Pokéshipping because neither really had much competition other than people thinking James was gay (nowadays apparently some places ship Jessie with Ash's mom but I've mostly read others talking about that so I can't say much about it).

Brock, Pikachu, and Meowth didn't really seem to have a mainline shipping partner that I ever saw--they sometimes had shipping fics but to nowhere near the same extent. MeowthXPikachu appeared very early on, but I don't think it was ever very big--I don't think I saw it just pop into a story without being the focus of the plot more than once or twice.

 

[Archaic]

Any memories you can share of ye olde Rocketshipping fandom would be appreciated. I only “found” the internet circa 2006 when people were already fondly reminiscing about the good old times

You’d probably have to give a more specific question there to help job my memory. ^^;;; I wasn’t heavily involved in the Rocket side of things. I was heavily involved in the shipping debates, and those didn't tend to touch RocketShipping. After RocketShipping was confirmed in the Toshiro Ono manga, it was pretty much considered inevitable that it'd eventually happen in the anime. As a result, it was mostly the creatives keeping that ship afloat.

Also very happy to read more about any and all historic fandom beef lol. Any personal favourite fights or kooky characters from back then?

There's a fairly large number of names I could bring up, like ChaosRocket, my counterpart with the PalletShippers International. Though honestly, I don't want to dredge up too much of outright drama. Suffice it to say, there was a lot of drama. PokéShippers vs. PalletShippers was the ship war of all ship wars. The wars in the ATLA and Harry Potter fandoms are the closest things have come since to how things were back for us.

What was the main Ash ship before AmourShipping and Serena were created?

The main Ash ship was, and IMO still is, PokéShipping.

 

[staticmoth]

i normally come from the video game side when it comes to shipping lol. although i really liked advanceshipping and pokéshipping back in the day (i think mostly the former because i was introduced to the anime around the time may joined so that probably has something do to with that!)

i'd still say that anime ships tend to be more popular than game ships. that being said, what were the big game adjacent ships back in the day? (if there were any?)

also: who were the big fan artists/fic writers for pokéshipping back in the day? and are they still active in 2026? i recall miya from waaaay back when i was a kid digging around for fan art on deviantart and i was really surprised to still see them active and drawing comics these days!!

 

[Archaic]

i normally come from the video game side when it comes to shipping lol. although i really liked advanceshipping and pokéshipping back in the day (i think mostly the former because i was introduced to the anime around the time may joined so that probably has something do to with that!)

i'd still say that anime ships tend to be more popular than game ships. that being said, what were the big game adjacent ships back in the day? (if there were any?)

Red/Misty is the only thing that comes to mind there, though it's not like we ever had real proof her boyfriend in Gold/Silver/Crystal was him.

also: who were the big fan artists/fic writers for pokéshipping back in the day? and are they still active in 2026? i recall miya from waaaay back when i was a kid digging around for fan art on deviantart and i was really surprised to still see them active and drawing comics these days!!

For fanfics, I'm honestly drawing a blank on their names, but I don't believe any of them are active. The people who ran "Pokémon: Ash & Misty's Love" had collated a lot of the big PokéShipping fics from the earliest days (when everyone still called it AAML rather than PokéShipping), but I can't recall if they were authors of any of those themselves.
As for fanart... it was sadly common for people back then to share art they'd found online without properly crediting the original artists, so the true providence of a lot of that art is uncertain. I do recall one excellent piece that got published in one of the English printings of a chapter issue for Ono's manga, but I no longer have those and those fanart pages weren't in the later collected volumes.

 

[pilosophos]

How active were Pokémon Adventures ships at the time? Any memorable news or events from back in the day? I think I've seen a couple of archived threads here and on Serebii from quite a long time ago but I wasn't in the Pokémon internet fandom when they were still active.

 

[Archaic]

How active were Pokémon Adventures ships at the time? Any memorable news or events from back in the day? I think I've seen a couple of archived threads here and on Serebii from quite a long time ago but I wasn't in the Pokémon internet fandom when they were still active.

From what I recall, these was extremely little activity relating to Adventures. The series wasn’t all that widely available in comparison to today, and most of the active shippers on the forums simply didn’t have access to it.

Besides Ono’s Electric Tale of Pikachu, which pretty much overlapped with anime shipping, the two series that I recall actually having some reasonable shipping activity were Magical Pokémon Journey, and Pokémon Gold & Silver: The Golden Boys. You would’ve thought those would’ve suffered from the same or greater availability problems as Adventures, but I suppose they may have also been more inherently shipping friendly. The main plot of Magical Pokémon Journey was explicitly focused on a love story, and Golden Boys was latched onto by the fujoshi crowd (and had its Singapore English release widely pirated, IIRC).

 

[NumberOneSpinelApologist]

Why did the average ship war warrior go to war? As in, what drove people to do the battles, or at least, what did they say about their reasons?
Ship wars have changed their axis nowadays, I am curious about how that shift has happened

 

[Mialentia]

Well, it's me, so I have to ask.

Would you say yuri (F/F ships) has been becoming more popular and widespread now compared to before? Or is it the same, or even, god forbid, less now?

 

[Archaic]

Why did the average ship war warrior go to war? As in, what drove people to do the battles, or at least, what did they say about their reasons?
Ship wars have changed their axis nowadays, I am curious about how that shift has happened

TLDR; Canon

The ship wars weren't about which couple was cuter, but rather which believed they were (or would be in the future) canon. The debates were primarily about what was the objectively correct interpretation of events depicted in Pokémon media, with each side claiming certain events as "hints" that the writers were developing a relationship between the characters in their ship and laying the groundwork for them to actually get together in the future.

And yes, this did mean you'd sometimes get debates between different groups of supporters of the same couple, such as the PokéShippers arguing against the so-called GakiShippers who believed that Misty's Song should count as a hint as opposed to just being an American creation with no validity.

Well, it's me, so I have to ask.

Would you say yuri (F/F ships) has been becoming more popular and widespread now compared to before? Or is it the same, or even, god forbid, less now?

Absolutely they'd be more popular and widespread now than they were in the past. The only yuri ships of significance that I can recall were Nurse Joy & Officer Jenny (LilacShipping, amongst other names), and Hazel & Coconut (AlienShipping, a.k.a. PeppermintShipping). And of those, only AlienShipping was something people actually got in debates over hints for, LilacShipping was mostly just a "wouldn't they be cute together" thing, though there were a couple of things people did point to about a specific Jenny perhaps having an interest in a specific Joy.

As a side note there... I notice the current versions of the list put Coconut first rather than Hazel for the AlienShipping and PepermintShipping entries. In the past, the name order in each entry actually had significance, with the character coming first being the one who people perceived as "wearing the pants in that relationship". For instance, that's why RocketShipping was "Jessie & James" rather than "James and Jessie".

 

[ii kanji]

Ship wars have changed their axis nowadays, I am curious about how that shift has happened

I’m glad you raised this subject, because I’ve been curious about this for a while… (And my questions are not necessarily directed at you but just at the crowd in general!)

When I joined the fandom we were all still very concerned about canon and I feel like my shipping “values” were founded on that. But nowadays it seems like (at least on these forums, I’m not sure if it’s different elsewhere?) shipping is much more driven by imagination. I’m often surprised by how much traction the game character ships get for example, considering how little “screen time” they are given to develop their own characters, let alone interpersonal relationships…

There’s also been a massive upsurge of LGBT ships and I wonder if some of that deviation from “it must be canon” comes from a need for more representation which the franchise won’t openly provide? I’m not sure. But it’s really interesting how much the landscape has changed in 20 years.

Anyway, what I’ve been genuinely curious about is does it bother people if there is little to no official media that supports their chosen ship(s)?

Also - are there actually still ship wars now and if so whatever about?

PokéShippers arguing against the so-called GakiShippers

Aww, this brings back some complicated memories about different Rocketshipping factions… People were still using terms like R*cketshippers and Queershippers even in recent years. I guess even those who ship the same ship have totally unique takes/irreconcilable differences lol.

 

[staticmoth]

When I joined the fandom we were all still very concerned about canon and I feel like my shipping “values” were founded on that. But nowadays it seems like (at least on these forums, I’m not sure if it’s different elsewhere?) shipping is much more driven by imagination. I’m often surprised by how much traction the game character ships get for example, considering how little “screen time” they are given to develop their own characters, let alone interpersonal relationships…

yeah, same!! i'd say back in the day there was a real emphasis on something becoming canon or having canon evidence in order for it to be a viable ship. all other ships were considered crack.

but i'm not sure where it started to change, i think my own mindset shifted during my time on livejournal and really started multishipping. for me its all about vibes and whether or not the dynamic vibes with me much less then canon?

and w/ pokémon video games at least, i'd say most ships are unlikely to become canon, or even have any canon interaction! there are only like a handful of canon ships in the series and so much space to fill in the gaps. i'd definitely agree that shipping these days are much more driven by imagination!!

that said, i think canon interaction is still the biggest driver of popular ships. there is a reason why namelessshippers lost their minds when sun and moon came out. holy shit?? red and green on vacation in alola?? they're honeymooning ;u;

There’s also been a massive upsurge of LGBT ships and I wonder if some of that deviation from “it must be canon” comes from a need for more representation which the franchise won’t openly provide? I’m not sure. But it’s really interesting how much the landscape has changed in 20 years.

perhaps!! i also think that shipping BL/GL these days is far less stigmatized then it was back in the day. it was really awkward posting about a BL ship and going "haha i don't really like yaoi!!" see here: poor closeted fudanshi me basically saying just that c':

 

[Archaic]

Looking back, I'd say there were three major milestones on the shift in the importance of canon to shipping discussions on the major Pokémon fandom forums:

1. The Pact of Pallet: The peace treaty between OPS and PI, which essentially imposed rules on debaters so that those who didn't want any part in the debates wouldn't find themselves thrust into them unwillingly just because they'd expressed an opinion on a ship, allowed the non-debaters to start flourishing within shipping specific spaces whereas before they'd essentially been drowned out.
2. The departure of Misty and the beginning of AG: The PokéShippers were one of the groups who were most concerned with canon, and with Misty's departure there was a whole lot less for them to discuss there, simply because they was already broad consensus within PokéShipping about what counted as a hint and why. Debates at this point still happened, but were much smaller in scope and participation, being mostly split between people questioning interpretations of things AdvanceShippers claimed as hints, and groups saying PokéShipping should be considered disproven because Misty had left.
3. The end of AG and the beginning of DP: With the Battle Frontier arc of AG showing that even returning to Kanto wouldn't actually bring back the Kanto companions, DP firmly establishing the expectation that Ash's companions would change with every new generation (since up until then, people had held out hope for Misty and/or Brock returns based on Brock's return for the start of Johto), and the fact that there was no clear aging of any of the characters, it was now clear that it was unlikely we'd ever have a relationship established during the run of a series. With respect to Ash ships, people had concluded that we'd likely see one-sided crushes from each season's female companion towards Ash, but no reciprocation from Ash during the run of the series itself. Those who cared about canon now pinned their hopes on whatever was going to be established when the series eventually concluded, and we all knew that was long in the future, so debates about canon just didn't seem important anymore.

I would guess AmourShipping shipping was another milestone there, that potentially shifted things back in the other direction briefly, but since I wasn't active in shipping debates at that time myself I can't really be sure. All the big names in the debating community had all long since moved on from shipping debates at that point though.

 

[Vengeful Ghost]

In general, the shipping culture of multiple fandoms, not just this one, changed when creators made their own social media accounts and interacted with fans. Creators became less vague and nebulous and more accessible.

 

[pilosophos]

From what I recall, these was extremely little activity relating to Adventures. The series wasn’t all that widely available in comparison to today, and most of the active shippers on the forums simply didn’t have access to it.

Besides Ono’s Electric Tale of Pikachu, which pretty much overlapped with anime shipping, the two series that I recall actually having some reasonable shipping activity were Magical Pokémon Journey, and Pokémon Gold & Silver: The Golden Boys. You would’ve thought those would’ve suffered from the same or greater availability problems as Adventures, but I suppose they may have also been more inherently shipping friendly. The main plot of Magical Pokémon Journey was explicitly focused on a love story, and Golden Boys was latched onto by the fujoshi crowd (and had its Singapore English release widely pirated, IIRC).

Yeah, that certainly tracks. I became a shipper around the early 2010s when you could just Google for Pokémon Adventures and get every scanlation that'd been released up until that point within minutes.

Pokémon Adventures is actually pretty shippy, but only really starting with Ruby & Sapphire, when FranticShipping became canon. To this day, I think the canon and mostly-canon ships are still the most popular Pokéspe ships, and unlike the anime, the characters are actually allowed to grow up and become adults, rather than being stuck in a perpetual relationship limbo. I think Green(f) is canonically in her mid-20s as of her last appearance?

I feel like when Electric Tale of Pikachu gets mentioned by Pokémon influencers, it's always about one of two things: the censorship and that RocketShipping panel. I wonder how much that volume is going for on eBay these days.

What I'd love to be able to do is scrape the FFN fic database for Pokémon shipping fanfics and see how the trends changed over time since 1998. I did some analysis of Wattpad at this thread but it wasn't longitudinal and it only includes data after 2006. It surprised me that RocketShipping didn't even make the top 10 most written-about ships when 2006-2026 is considered.

---

Oh wow, look at this Bulbapedia article on the History of Pokémon shipping archived from 2008, which mentions the Pact of Pallet. This is so much more detailed than I was expecting.

 

[Archaic]

What I'd love to be able to do is scrape the FFN fic database for Pokémon shipping fanfics and see how the trends changed over time since 1998. I did some analysis of Wattpad at this thread but it wasn't longitudinal and it only includes data after 2006. It surprised me that RocketShipping didn't even make the top 10 most written-about ships when 2006-2026 is considered.

One thing you'll have to keep in mind is that a lot of early Pokémon shipping fanfic on FFN got purged years ago. Some by FFN itself in various purges they've done over the years (it didn't help that a lot of people had put lemons and limes up there in the old days when they were edgy teenagers), some by the authors themselves (who didn't want to associate their earliest works with their current output, etc).

There’s also been a massive upsurge of LGBT ships and I wonder if some of that deviation from “it must be canon” comes from a need for more representation which the franchise won’t openly provide? I’m not sure. But it’s really interesting how much the landscape has changed in 20 years.

perhaps!! i also think that shipping BL/GL these days is far less stigmatized then it was back in the day. it was really awkward posting about a BL ship and going "haha i don't really like yaoi!!" see here: poor closeted fudanshi me basically saying just that c':

Just to come back to this point... a huge part of the problem for LGBTQ+ ships in those early days was absolutely the focus the community had on "canon". One of the biggest arguments against LGBT ships back then, at least in respect to the anime and associated media, was a meta argument about what kinds of content were considered child-appropriate for broadcast on television. To be clear, this wasn't an argument rooted in bigotry (though it's certainly more than possible some making the argument held those beliefs), but rather a statement that western society, and TV networks in particular, were not yet progressive enough to accept that kind of content in a children's program, and that the series creators would surely not risk the inevitable backlash from introducing that sort of thing.

EDIT: Missed this one while I was typing

Oh wow, look at this Bulbapedia article on the History of Pokémon shipping archived from 2008, which mentions the Pact of Pallet. This is so much more detailed than I was expecting.

IIRC, you'll need to take that article with a lot of salt. It's basically a copy/paste of a document that was originally written by someone who had the explicit intention of presenting a PalletShipping viewpoint of things, and contains a number of factual inaccuracies and distortions (some of which may have been intentional on the part of the author).