Midnight Sparkle, actually. But you’re not far off.

@Darth Sonic
 
Well, I lumpéd them as in ‘not being main cast’. Which neither of them are. I wasn’t trying to move the goalpost.
 
Obviously having an episode about Celestia or Shining Armor makes more sense than one about, say, Derpy.

@Background Pony #8D36  
Yet in an earlier post, you lumped Luna in with Cheerilee. Which indicates some goalpost shifting on your part. Classy.

@Background Pony #8D36  
You must be able to differentiate between supoorting characters and background characters for this discussion to apply. Yes, focus will be less on writing episodes for “pony who strongly resembles Marty McFly in a flashback from S06E10. No, focus will have the possibility to be given to writing episodes for Cheerilee during said flashback because this episode is bleeding focused on her already. ;3

@Darth Sonic
 
Luna, Celestia, Shining and Cadance, sure. They’re proper secondary cast and getting the odd episode focused on them isn’t surprising.
 
I’d argue Cheerilee is not quite there though. She has no weight on the story and the Big Mac X Cheerilee shipping episode did nothing to establish her as more important than just a random nice teacher.

@Background Pony #8D36  
But I’m not talking about a Background Pony episode like 100. I’m talking about episode focused on secondary characters that have had speaking roles, like Cherrilee and Luna. These are inevitable in any long-running series.

@Darth Sonic
 
Hey, man. I was just stating why I think it’s a good thing that episode 100 was a special. I personally can’t get into it when the focus is elsewhere.
 
I myself hope it doesn’t become trend in the show but if it does, well, nothing I can do about it. I wouldn’t be the first person to get thrown off a show and wouldn’t be the last.

@Darth Sonic  
Also, yes. For as varied and colourful as the mane characters are, a great number of us enjoy Muffin Hooves Derpo Marx and the Three Christmas Ghosts jump up and down a bouncy castle while in the foreground, Cadance proceeds to bring Skyla into the world. X3
 
Yes, I admit I know nothing of the Marx Brothers. The only things I remember about the Marx’s is Harpo’s guest spot on I Love Lucy, random blobs of memory in my Looney Tunes brain folder, and Marx from Kirby, an allusion to Popopo’s renaming to a popular birthname that was discarded in the mid-20th century. X3

@Background Pony #8D36  
Well tough. Cartoons, or hell, just episodic shows in general, that have run as long as this one will inevitable start to have more focus episodes on side characters in order to avoid burning out main characters. You’ll just have to live with it.

@Phantom Rider  
Honestly, i don’t give a Syayt

@Background Pony #8D36  
The reason I watch it? Shining and every other stallion with a silly California accent. X3

@Phantom Rider
 
Honestly? Not really. First, that last episode was a crazy mess and I don’t think it made Luna look better at all.
 
I like to think no one watches the show because of Cheerilee. Or Big Mac. Or Filthy Rich. Or even Luna. Those are side/secondary characters and they should remain so.

@Background Pony #8D36  
You wouldn’t be interested in Cheerilee getting a turn to be a character in her own right just once in a while? Or another like this past one, where the development went to Luna and she got to show her stuff?

@Phantom Rider
 
Well, the show is supposed to be about the mane six. It’s their show. And they’re the reason it’s lasted this long.
 
Episode 100 is and should remain a special exception.

@Ihhh  
Reasonable argument to me… it was kind of a swerve from “Twilight minus the magic of friendship” to “destroying her life with an unhealthy obsession with Sparklebutt” about halfway through.
 
Though in the end, I felt that it was interesting to see actual character development with someone who isn’t one of the Mane Six/CMC. The show’s got a lot of great characters it hardly uses, and as awesome as “Slice of Life” was, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of sadness. After all, that was others getting a turn in the spotlight as a once-ever super-special thing. I’ve always wished they’d do more like the comics (where that “Cheerilee episode” and “Princesses episode” have already happened, and Fleetfoot got to have a crush on Big Mac, and so on.) but Episode 100, though quite a gift, was proof that it would never happen: “And now for something completely different: for one night only, other faces who’ve been there from day one get to do more than give exposition or have an incidental line.”
 
And here it is, turning out to not be true! An episode where everyone Twilight passed by in the premiere gets the spotlight, and history, and personalities… and the one who needed the lesson was the one who’d only been mentioned then. The swerve came out of nowhere, but it made it Moondancer’s story! And I’m psyched for this to continue to be a world where the Moondancers of the world can have a story.

“@Background Pony #8D36”
 
Nitpicking much?

haha

You mean she’s not literally an exact duplicate of Twilight?!? No, impossible, that means they’re nothing alike

@Phantom Rider
 
That’s what I didn’t like about Moondancer. She is supposed to be some sort of ‘what if’ Twilight but that fails completely once you realize how much she had to have cared about Twilight herself and that that was the reason.
 
Twilight, on the other hand, used shut others out because she didn’t see the point in friendship, not because someone hurt her.

@Darth Sonic  
And even though it doesn’t fit the name scheme perfectly, Moondancer’s another ‘alternate Twilight,’ since she’s Sparklebutt minus the other Mane Six. (Well, she was presented that way until we found out she’s practically the most loved pony in Canterlot but became a shut-in totally because Twilight-senpai wouldn’t notice her.)

Sunlight Yellow.
 
Actually, if I think about it, I’d prefer Star Platinum. I suppose I say “Sunlight Yellow” because it’s not properly finished, the name. X3

There is a Starbeam Twinkle. Maybe she’s the next villain.

@Background Pony #12A7  
Most of us know this. We’re just making a joke about the recent spat of Villains whose names are alternates of Twilight Sparkle (Sunset Shimmer, Starlight Glimmer, the last names of the Dazzlings, etc).

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