That seems to confirm what I think, that the fandom's perception has changed.



Lily Longsocks has something iconic that has the potential to inspire lots of stories and drawings like the classical background ponies that got so popular have; her super strength, she has something stand-outish in her appearance cause a filly with pigtails isn't seen that often (she might even be the first, but I'm not sure) and a hedgehog as a cutie mark is definitely a first.

And her super strength and that she lifted a whole house is much more intriguing and exciting, inspiring and creativity-inducing, than comedic.

It's strange what you said about her being "a nameless character thrown in for comedy" because if you think about it, all the things you said about Lily Longsocks could be said about Lyra too with her appearance that made her so popular back in Season 1:





She didn't have a name, was just a background character.



She did have an interesting outer appearance, while her general look was not so special, her colors were very unique at this time.



And like Lily, she did something unusual and intriguing with sitting on the bench in this iconic way.





But back then, no one said she's just a nameless character thrown in for comedy and ignored her quickly again. No, she spawned a very popular meme, whole theories about her knowing about humans and enjoying human lifestyle, was paired up with Bon Bon and the two became the most popular ship ever, got two of the most famous fanfictions ever written and one of the most famous fandom songs and probably a ton of things more I don't know about yet because I wasn't here from the start. And she's still a regular in many fanworks; fics, animations, ect.

And Lily Longsocks? One fic that explains how she got her super strength, a sequel for it, a very short snippet of a shipfic collection that is barely a few hundred words long, a failed askblog that was abandoned and deleted by the creator right at the start and a bunch of fanarts that are barely enough to fill a few pages on Derpibooru.



As I said, you are just one brony who this happened to and that's not enough to make conclusions about the fandom as a whole, but it makes me thinking.....

I should bring this up for discussion in front of more people. I'm going to open a thread in the Writer's group on FIMFiction.net as soon as I can.