Kids these days...

Pretty much kicking her to the curb in HG/SS, and by extension, robbing her of her champion position. At least for those who chose to play as Leaf in FR/LG.

For HG/SS, Game Freak could have easily implemented a function that would use the DS/GBA dual slot that could have read your team, character, and name in FR/LG and placed your FR/LG character on Mt. Silver (Red being the default for those who didn't/couldn't transfer their data/didn't play FR/LG/owned a DSi without the GBA slot/etc.). They already did something similar in R/S/E with the Secret Base function, so the ability and technology to do so was in place. In this case, I would also rename "Blue" to match your rival's name from FR/LG as well (In what is perhaps the ultimate irony, my rival in LG was named "Red" though that actually was a default name for him - as it also was in Blue version, IIRC).

FWIW, I never felt the Johto games were a sequel to the Kanto games, because the name/team of your character in Kanto was very likely changed to the default "Red" (as well as the name of your rival to "Blue" and possibly your character's gender in the case of FR/LG to HG/SS) in Johto.

B2/W2's "Memory Link" function also serves as a good example, as that inserted your B/W character's name in references to their past exploits, instead of assigning a default name to that character.

I do admit that I'm more critical of the franchise than a lot of other fans, so I'm less willing to accept when a less-than-powerful trainer or Pokemon enjoys a disproportionately high level of popularity.

I was only really to download Sinnoh-region event Pokemon, since there I had wi-fi access and ways to easily get to brick-and-mortar stores for those event releases. Most of Gen 5 and HG/SS events I missed out on.

I can think of several decisions that have been made that might have hindered appealing to female buyers.

No personal opinion on the TCG, I never really got into that lol

I've never seen pockets that big or pockets with a pointed shape.

That shape can't possibly be practical.

Two things about that: (1) the fan art is the only way I "interact" with others in the fandom since I've strayed away from Pokemon discussion threads for some time now, and (2) these art pieces come from a large number of different artists. It's not limited to a few who repeatedly post.

I've seen precious few others (here, on Deviant Art, or on GameFaqs) speak out against Red. I've seen a few more who express their dislike of Pikachu. That tells me at the very least, most fans don't see anything wrong with them.

On the art sites, I don't really do subscriptions/watching; I just use the search function. Now, why either of them show up when I do a search for "Pokemon Female Protagonist" or "Pokemon Female Trainer" (because I'm also looking for works of the still-unnamed X/Y female trainer) is beyond me since one is not a female and the other is not a trainer.

Fan art can be a nasty place when you hate the popular characters of the fandom and like some of the overlooked characters of it.