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What was the most popular Ash ship before AmourShipping?

I think all the most popular Ash ships are equally popular, and it’s more a matter of what era of Ash you grew up with (grew up with while also getting into shipping) that determined which you gravitate towards. I think Misty/May/Dawn/Serena are all equally popular girls to pair up with Ash (maybe the Alola girls following them, some of Ash’s rivals are as popular as the M/F ships, and far behind is Iris for… a few reasons I think).
 
I suppose that depends on exactly how you define "most popular", peak versus longevity. I would probably argue PearlShipping had the largest recent peak at the time, and PokeShipping sustained its popularity the longest (perhaps PokeShipping was more popular than PearlShipping at their respective peaks, but that was before my time). PearlShipping got a lot of hype during DP, and given how unpopular NegaiShipping (and all of BW) proved to be, it was able to sustain that popularity into XY. I remember Project PearlShipping and the like was very focused on a "rivalry" with AmourShipping until XY ended. PokeShipping, on the other hand, was the original, and a lot of early viewers of the show shipped it. It's easily the longest-sustained Ash ship, and I think some newer fans are still drawn to it because Misty was the original Pokegirl.
 
Just to muddy things further, the AdvanceShipping threads have managed to rack up nearly 16k posts between, making them the chattiest shippers on BMGf! (At least half of which posts were written after Haruka’s last appearance…)
 
ii kanji said:
Just to muddy things further, the AdvanceShipping threads have managed to rack up nearly 16k posts between, making them the chattiest shippers on BMGf! (At least half of which posts were written after Haruka’s last appearance…)
Click to expand...
This made me really curious, so I scoured bmgf and sppf for all of the discussion threads I could find about Poke, Advance, Pearl, Negai, and Pallet, and I checked fanfic posts on ff.net as well. The results surprised me a lot!

In 5th is PalletShipping. I found 2906 posts on bmgf, 524 posts on sppf, and 314 fanfics on ff.net, for a grand total of 3744 posts. Kind of surprising for such an old pairing? Although I wonder if some old threads have been deleted since then. Obviously Pallet hasn't been very popular in recent years though, even though it used to be huge.

In 4th (unsuprisingly) is NegaiShipping. 374 posts on bmgf, 4818 on sppf, and 88 on ff.net, for 5280 total. Honestly, I was surprised there were so many posts on Serebii, though it's still far lower than the top 3.

In 3rd (to my surprise lol) is PearlShipping. 3263 posts on bmgf, 15,730 on sppf, and 786 on ff.net, for 19,779 posts in total. I remember PearlShipping being very popular, so it surprises me that the numbers are relatively small. I suppose nearly 20 thousand posts can't be called small but it's still less than I thought.

In 2nd (sort of) is AdvanceShipping. 15,969 posts on bmgf, 19,886 posts on sppf, and 1111 on ff.net, for a total of 36,966. I guess this one makes a lot of sense, given how Advance was popular when bmgf and sppf were both new, and people were constantly comparing it to PokeShipping.

In 1st is PokeShipping! 13,575 posts on bmgf, 30,418 on sppf, and 1737 on ff.net, for a grand total of a staggering 45,730. Like PalletShipping, this one needs an asterisk too as I suspect some earlier threads have been deleted (the oldest thread on sppf specifically mentions an older one deleted with over 1000 posts, and I have strong doubts the first PokeShipping general discussion thread on bmgf was created in 2009).

But, you might say, this only tells part of the story. All of these pairings have been around for vastly different periods of time, so older pairings have had more time to accumulate posts. I adjusted the numbers to account for the differences in time since each of their respective series premiered, so I can also give information for posts per day.

5th PalletShipping 0.357729792 posts per day
4th NegaiShipping 0.952552769 posts per day
3rd PearlShipping 2.825975139 posts per day
2nd PokeShipping 4.369386585 posts per day
1st AdvanceShipping 4.397573162 posts per day

AdvanceShipping just barely edges out PokeShipping, though again, I suspect potentially deleted threads might sway the results back into PokeShipping's favor. Things are so close that I feel comfortable saying PokeShipping and AdvanceShipping were basically tied in popularity.

And just for fun? Let's look at AmourShipping.

479 posts on bmgf. Ok. Not a ton.

1127 fanfics up on ff.net. Pretty solid.

sppf? uh. 52,709 posts.

54,315 posts in total.

12.28012661 posts per day.

... AmourShippers really like to talk a lot. I should know. I was there.
 
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