History YMMV / InfinityTrainBlossomingTrail

* AmericansHateTingle: While popular on [=A03=], ''Blossoming Trail'' has garnered negative reception on sites like Spacebattles, Serebii and Bulbagarden due to the treatment of Ash, as the Pokémon forumgoers on those sites see him as being needlessly belittled and mistreated by the fic's narrative. Even when the author took the criticisms to heart and Ash and Chloe start rebuilding their friendship in Act 2, most people had already given up on the story. Especially as the equally horrific treatment of Goh and serious dislike of theirs over Chloe made them unwilling to go back to reading the story, to the point that bringing up the story in those sites is more likely to incite mockery and potshots at it than anything else.

* [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation/InfinityTrainBlossomverse Alternate Character Interpretation]]

** There is a gem of truth in the idea that focusing too much on one part of the Pokemon world, the Pokemon themselves, can neglect the idea of human interactions and the wider world itself. It is a world of both humans and Pokemon after all. Chloe and the story of Blossoming Trail is interested in raising this point, the problem is that it fails to truly demonstrate the idea. Not only are many of the human characters involved genuinely growing thanks to their interactions with Pokemon, but many of the human interactions they are said to be missing out on due to obsession are genuinely negative (such as Goh's school) or accidentally written as such (as would be the case with [[StrangledByTheRedString Trip]] and [[TheScrappy Parker]]), making the message come off as tone deaf at best and bending over backwards to support Chloe's views at worst. The possible counter-message, that being too obsessed with the human half of the Pokemon world is just as bad and that people need balance between the two, which could be easily fulfilled by Chloe or Parker, is also poorly, if at all, explored.

* DesignatedHero: While initially sympathetic, Chloe Cerise quickly becomes controversial once she boards the Train. Not only is she joyfully oblivious of the panic going back at home, but when she ''does'' find out, she ''relishes'' in it and spitefully refuses to let anybody know she's okay, even Goh, who constantly calls her only for her to tell him she wants nothing to do with him. She also blames things on everybody else while refusing to see her own role in everything, to the point she's perfectly willing to ''return to the Train'' if Vermillion City isn't up to her liking. To add insult to injury, while she does grow more confident during her stay at the Train, she only does something about her spiteful NeverMyFault tendencies after her mother calls her out for it, which only happens after the fiasco of Act 2, a fiasco that can be ''traced back to her and a poorly worded message on her part.''

** Later in the story, it begins deconstructing the AccusationFic tropes by pointing out how things aren't so black and white, DisproportionateRetribution is not acceptable, and those who subscribe to the idea are going to be called out on it. This is a decent message...unless Parker is involved. He acts much the same way as the protagonist of an AccusationFic: blames everybody, sees things as black and white, and believes only in justice with extreme prejudice. However, instead of being called out, people keep praising him over how he knew Chloe better than everybody else while doing little to nothing to curb his violent tendencies. Even when he gets his just desserts after the Unown incident, the narrative ''still'' coddles him by giving him many moments where he acts like he didn't learn his lesson, culminating in a courtroom scene where he devolves into ShamingTheMob, all while acting like ''he's'' the better man in the situation.

** A frequent issue when Ash is called out for not getting to know Chloe as the story basically treats the idea of his asking her to do things with them beyond the first idea offered as basic decency and not, say, harassment. In general, a lot of the complaints Ash is given by the narrative and some readership can be boiled down to him not knowing things people were not telling him or knowing to ask about[[note]]barring asking Goh in Episode 11 who just answered, "She just stopped liking them one day"[[/note]], or acting as if it's his job to be friends with everyone. Arc 2 changes this by showing Trip realizing he just made Ash harbor a GuiltComplex and is now working on telling Ash that it's not his fault this happened.

* AuthorFilibuster: A non-political example. The story's narration frequently throws in the author's thoughts on various pieces of media such as ''WesternAnimation/SofiaTheFirst'' and ''VideoGame/SilentHill'', filtered through the characters. At one point in the Fog Car, Goh has an internal aside where he exposits his opinions on the two Silent Hill movies... having just found out his friend is in potentially mortal danger.