irishock wrote: ↑December 29th, 2020, 2:17 am
I strongly believe that he was leading towards a Conan/Ai/Ran love triangle where Ai would confess her feelings and it'd be a major part of the storyline
You mean back during the Desperate Revival (251–260/188–193), during the 1st half of the Vermouth arc? Absolutely. Not just Desperate Revival, but the Blue Castle case (200–203/136–137) and Metropolitan Police Detective Love Story 2 (231–233/156–157) were not so subtly telling us this was where things were going.
It still could've gone in that direction, even with the case where she and Ran actually interacted for the first time (311–313/246–247), Rotten Apple (429–434/345) and Black Impact (499–504/425) in mind.
But as time's gone on, that potential love triangle has become an aspect belonging to a single arc, and certainly not an element recurring in the series.
irishock wrote: ↑December 29th, 2020, 2:17 am
but the real life aspect of Haibara gaining massive popularity was something Gosho didn't expect, and since he had already decided on a ShinRan ending, he had no choice but to nix that storyline, or else Ai would ultimately surpass Ran's fanbase (let's face it, at that pace she would have)
In regards to the popularity part—if Gosho was invested in his endgame ship being popular amongst the fanbase...
(As opposed to him already deciding on the ShinRan endgame
only because he himself liked it and not caring if it wasn't liked by his readership... which I can see, because the Shinichi/Ran First Contact case (921–924/853–854) was the case he made when he thought it may be the last DC story he'd make—this was back during his set of hospitalizations in 2014/2015 that led to the month-long breaks, at the time...
Him making that case assuming his health could take a turn for the worse and prevent any further cases from being made, so, just in case, he had to get the story of how Shinichi and Ran first met out there? That tells me that he's a true believer in the pairing between Shinichi and Ran, regardless of whether that pairing being popular has influenced his decision making)
...then I can see him cancelling the love triangle, if he assumed Shiho's/Ai's edge and snark—and, generally, Goshō's tapping into how relatable a character dissatisfied by life could be (after all, he's said that she and Kogorō, out of all the cast, are the ones most often voicing his own thoughts)—would ultimately carry her to the top of the character popularity hierarchy, and he didn't want Ran getting showed up.
I think that he's consistently wanted an endgame of Shinichi and Ran, and may have also cared about his preferred pairing being popular amongst the fans of DC... but if he had to chose between them, he'd chose his own favor for the pairing, regardless of fan opinion—thus, even if he was afraid of fan backlash (from the more numerous Shiho/Ai fans), it wouldn't have motivated him to do away with something that was always fated to end with Ran ending up with Shinichi, anyway (be it at the end of that storyline or at the end of the series). So I say he probably just decided to nix it because it got to a point where this potential love triangle just didn't interest him anymore, and he moved on.
I do think, though, he should've at least explored this storyline a bit more, if only for more Shiho/Ai and Ran interaction (interaction between them interests me just as much, if not more, than their respective interactions with Shinichi).