Triple Newsletter, Dec, Jan, Feb 14-15

We apologise for the hiatus in newsletters! To be honest we’re not really quite sure what happened, but we were pretty surprised to learn from the comments section that the newsletters were actually a top feature of the site. To make up for it, this is a deeper newsletter on Pearlshipping and I hope you enjoy it.

We’ll start with the usual report on the Pearlshipping situation across the board.

Serebii: Unchanged, but not looking up for Pearlshipping. It’s slow, and more than occasionally, the topic includes more than you would want on Amourshipping. If you have time to spare and want to do your bit for the wider Pearlshipping circle, I would suggest a few stints on Serebii to ramp up the activity and give us all some hope.

Fanfiction: Haven’t been there recently after my rather temperamental exit. I would expect that the new fic rate isn’t as high as it was in the glory days, and that Amourshipping fics are on the rise, but do show your support for the active writers there by reviewing. A review really does make an author’s day. If it’s nice.

Deviantart: Last newsletter’s report said it was slow so I’m just going to go with that, and it’s probably true. That said though, more and more Amourshipping fanart is definitely cropping up when you google search Pearlshipping art, which is pretty annoying. There’s a market for Pearlshipping artists though. With the lack of new art coming out, any good artist that decides to start right now will probably have a quick and easy ish path to stardom.

Vault: Still trucking along. Pretty active actually, and the influx in new members is actually pretty remarkable over the past couple of months. It’s still currently in winter mode graphics wise but you’ll be able to tell when it’s back in full swing again when I upload the spring theme I’ve been working on (since December due to procrastination). Vault is also a good place to find out the Amourshipping updates and what’s happening on the anime.

Why does it seem as if Amourshipping will become canon, and how likely is it that it will be?

This is a worry that many of you have voiced on the site, and after much pondering, I feel prepared to offer my thoughts on this.

We’ve got to think about the Pokémon franchise as a whole. Now, you all know that views decreased dramatically from DP to BW, and Pokémon popularity as a whole was low. Obviously, when it comes to the entertainment industry, the strategically best move is to bring everyone back with a bang. And Pokémon has to cover this with ALL arenas. We know how the games dealt with this- mega evolutions, customizable trainers, dramatic new legendaries- all in a brand new 3D format.

And what of the anime? The anime’s got to be new and fresh if you really want to ramp up the XY hype. What have fans of the anime been thirsting for since literally the first season? An Ash romance. This is the most dramatic thing the writers could have possibly done (apart from replace Ash, but he has enough fans to stop the writers from replacing him). I think the route the writers were hoping for- in an ideal world- was to unite the shippers of Pokémon in support of this one new and very obvious ship. You have the exhausted Poke, Advance and Pearlshippers who all (in theory) have lost hope and any scrap of conviction in their ship. And any who did display this in online activity obviously weren’t taking it very seriously (in theory).

And of course, if everyone’s an Amourshipper, this leads to a colossal number of views, and with romance, they have the opportunity to have more than the average number of episodes in the series to hype up. I mean, you can only have so many legendary Pokémon episodes to get people excited about, but with romance, you’ve got a few more, haven’t you? This would also scrap the same old same old mentality that most long time Pokémon viewers have.

But has it worked? Mostly, but not completely. Although Amourshipping is very popular, it’s not popular enough that the percentage of non Amourshippers is insignificant. If it is canonized, Pokémon would still lose a lot of viewers.

The episode of the “First date” tells us a lot about what Amourshipping means to the writers. The hype over the obviously romantic title and the resulting not very romantic content tells us that Amourshipping is primarily used to draw views in. In my mind, I think the writers aren’t really sure which direction to take the ship in, just that it means money- and that equals success for an anime writer. The date episode didn’t break any milestones either. Ash didn’t tell Serena she was his “best friend ever” or anything. If you think about it, Amourshipping hasn’t made much progress as a relationship at all. We’ve just had cheesy moments of close physical proximity or girlish puppy love on Serena’s part. This is VERY unlike the progress of Pearlshipping, and you can see the structure of it from the start of DP if you look. Pearlshipping was very structured, and you can see each phase of their relationship as it developed, which shows it was planned (and that’s the beauty of it, I think). Amourshipping seems to be sailing on unchartered waters at the moment- without a GPS.

So that’s it, stay Pearlshippy!

IceArceus