DivergentShipping

"Joshua is a very nice guy and first-class trainer. (Looks towards May) But you, stay away! (Looks back to Joshua) Joshua and I know each other since childhood, so of course we meant for each other. So we decided to show our love to the world by winnin' this Pokémon Contest together."

- Erica about Joshua

DivergentShipping is the het ship between Joshua and Erica from the Pokémon fandom.

Canon
Joshua is one of the Pokémon coordinators living in Pacifidlog Town. He trains with his Houndoom to become a better coordinator. Erica is one of the Pokémon coordinators who also lives in Pacifidlog and her dream is to win together with Joshua as the best coordinators in Hoenn and win a ribbon for both of them. Both of them are in love since they were kids. They appear only in two episodes "Mean With Envy" and "Pacifidlog Jam".

Pokémon: Advanced Battle
Although it is not seen, Joshua proposed to Erica to train separately for a week, with which Erica accepts. A week later, in episode "Mean With Envy", Joshua finds a Skitty that actually belongs to another trainer and decides to get attached to the Pokémon using a catnip.

Later, Skitty's trainer shows up, who turns out to be looking for it everywhere. There, Joshua meets the trainer, introducing themselves to each other. The trainer introduces herself as May, to which Joshua asks her if she will participate in Pacifidlog Pokémon contest.

At that, Erica appears, returning after a week of training. At that, Erica sees her boyfriend Joshua talking to May and is surprised and worried, making her jealous.

Joshua makes good comments about May's Skitty, and even comments on how cute the Cat Pokémon is. Much to Erica's chagrin, May began training with Joshua. At that, Erica begins to angrily and jealously surprise both of them. Erica starts to bring her furious face closer to May's, as if she used Leer on her. Erica tells Joshua that if what she wants is to tell the girls how cute they are, she is cuter than May. Joshua tries to convince Erica that it's a misunderstanding and that he meant how cute May's Skitty was, to which Erica refuses to believe that May just wanted to get her Skitty back from Joshua's hands. They were only doing so as friends, but Erica refused to believe May's story. She was convinced that May was going to steal Joshua away from her.

Erica decides to show her Jynx, her Pokémon that she will use in the Contest. At that, when all of May's friends show up, Joshua introduces his girlfriend Erica and Ash deduces that they will be May's rivals. At that, Team Rocket steals Pikachu and Snorunt, both of Ash's Pokémon. And to Erica's dismay, Joshua decides to help May fight together against Team Rocket, which was in the Meowth balloon. When they managed to free the captured Pokémon, Erica pushes May aside to stand next to Joshua and demonstrate how powerful Jynx is, ordering her to use Hyper Beam, which sends Team Rocket blast off. May gets angry because Erica pushed her aside and they start arguing until Joshua reminds Erica that if she doesn't hurry up, they will be late for the Contest.

Everyone is preparing for the next contest in Pacifidlog Town. Joshua makes Houndoom use a combination of the Shadow Ball and Swift, making something like a planet with 2 rings formed by stars. For her part, Erica makes Jynx do a combination of Blizzard and Psychic. When May came in to make her own moves of her Skitty, Joshua is impressed and claps for May, which makes Erica jealous and touches him as a warning sign.

Due to the judges' impressive ratings, Joshua and Erica move on to the second round, however, Erica gets angry when she learns that her rival May also moves on to the second round. Nevertheless, Erica hugs Joshua quite warmly because they both made it through to the second round.

In "Pacifidlog Jam", Erica has to face a strange competitor who calls herself the "Jester", while Joshua is left to watch the contest on TV with May. When all seemed lost for the Jester, Meowth used a fake move: the "Transformation" into a "Sunflora", which makes even Joshua surprised. However, things got more complicated for Jester when she was forced to use "Transformation", which makes the judge declare Jester illegal, disqualifying her from the Contest, which makes Erika move on to the finals. The Jester calls her partner and they both reveal their true identities - Jessie and James of Team Rocket. But they are easily defeated by Erica's Jynx's Hyper Beam, blasting them off again.

Joshua is the next competitor, who faces May in the Contest Battle. Joshua's Houndoom sports even moves with May's Skitty. Erica hoped that Joshua would defeat her, but she was stunned when May ended up defeating him. Now more than ever, Erica wanted to defeat May. At first, May's plan to use Assist seemed to go wrong, which looked like Erica's Jynx was about to win, pleasing Joshua, who wanted to share the ribbon with Erica, but one of Assist's unexpected moves made Skitty unexpectedly use Combusken's Fire Spin, which disintegrates Jynx's Hyper Beam and causes great damage to Erika's Jynx because it is Ice-type. Jynx was defeated by Skitty's Tackle, making May win the fifth and final ribbon needed to go to the Hoenn Grand Festival, causing Erica a change of heart.

She told May that she was jealous of her, and that she shouldn't have been, because she understood that Joshua was planning to compete with Erica as rivals instead of together because of the Contest rules. Ash and his friends say goodbye to Joshua and Erica, who plan to continue their training as coordinators for the next Grand Festival.

Their last minor appearance is in "Deceit and Assist", where Joshua and Erica watches via TV the Hoenn Grand Festival.

Fanon
DivergentShipping is a fairly popular ship canon, since it is talked about more in the Advanced Generation fanbase than in the rest of the seasons. Joshua and Erica were only eventual characters who appeared in 2 episodes. It is more preferred by fans who tend to be more inclined only to fully canon ships.

Fans of this ship focus on how Joshua and Erica have an impressive development as a couple regardless of only appearing in 2 episodes, as well as the rivalry against May. It even tends to be preferred by fans who are not satisfied with any of Ash's ships, because none of them are canon like DivergentShipping. However it has a very poor amount of fanfics written about this ship, so there is none written in AO3.

Because this ship is canon from the beginning, it usually beats the rival ship, the AccusationShipping (Joshua x May).

Fandom
FORUMS
 * DivergentShipping on Pokémon Shipping

FAN FICTION