i walk out on the stage. i lift a microphone. i say, “ctommy and cfundy are character foils of each other.” the crowd erupts in boos. they know i’m right.
…no, but listen. cfundy is a background character. he’s more established than some others, but he absolutely disappears and gets forgotten in fanon despite having presence & plot in all major storylines (l’manburg, manberg, new lman, las nevadas, cwil apology streams). don’t worry, canon forgets him too! no matter what he tries to do, he is always passive to the narrative. he has no lasting impact/nothing memorable/hardly an npc, because virtually dsmp could function without him.
on the other hand, ctommy Is the protagonist. a lot of the biggest events ride off ctommy’s decisions/character motivations; he’s the driving force in which things fall around, arguably the most memorable, definitely the one who has caused the biggest waves. everything he does - even when he is trying to Lay Low - gets picked apart and blown up, both by fans and by characters themselves (think cniki, ctechno, cdream). dsmp wouldn’t be the dsmp as we know without ctommy. ironically, even one of cfundy’s most memorable moments (the pet war) oftentimes gets attributed to solely ctommy!
so, you have a character who gives everything to everyone around him in the hopes of having Someone care, and a character who - for the sake of this argument - takes everything from everyone with the hopes that people won’t care. less foils in terms of personality, but 1000% foils in terms of how the narrative treats them and i refuse to hear otherwise.