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[billdenbrough]

is eddie neville longbottom

anon i have been flicking to this ask in my head for literally hours and i’m at… maybe? like i think it depends what you mean. 

wrt differences, neville has never been able to have a sheltered existence (they both exist in situations of trauma, but neville’s is growing up in the wake of it, and eddie’s is both growing up in an abusive home & the pretty significant trauma of dealing with pennywise—-like, neville ends up thrown into war and fighting death eaters, but that’s more of a resurgence than anything… he knows what the death eaters are, what they can do, and even at fifteen and injured and in the arms of death eaters, he’s still adamant that harry not give over the prophecy, not for him… like that’s the behaviour of someone intimately familiar with their power, because he grew up in a family that had been irreparably hurt by them, whereas wrt pennywise, while eddie has always grown up with sonia’s awful treatment, pennywise is still a different type of monster/experience, which is why i classify them as separate traumas as opposed to how neville’s is always defined by the same circumstances of pain) which i think leads to a very different outlook on the world. i also think the losers club are much closer than neville was to any of his fellow gryffindors, and that eddie is more centrally located in the narrative than neville was (he’s absolutely up there, but he’s secondary, i think, in a way the losers can’t be, but also that eddie specifically is not—-he largely has an individual and independent arc, and in fact affects other people’s arcs (namely richie’s), and has character autonomy that i think neville lacks (to the same degree, anyway, he definitely has it), which is likely just a virtue of the writing style (i.e., even if one argued that bill is the protag for it, then the other six are still the ron and hermiones of it all (i’m not even sure i agree with that reading becaue even across seven books, while we get a very strong sense of their characters, having the losers’ points of view creates an even stronger sense of self, i think), and neville is… maybe will hanlon, alongside sirius/arthur/remus/etc.), but still affects where i’m at with this

on the other hand, similarities. there’s the treatment from maternal figures, though in differing degrees (meaning augusta here for neville, not alice—-and i don’t want to reduce the effect augusta had, because she belittles him, she does, and she looks at him and expects to see her son again, and the weight of expectation… is fucking hard? and unfair? but at the same time, i don’t want to reduce sonia’s actions at all with false comparisons, so i’m just saying here that they have quite imposing maternal figures, whose actions and care differ greatly, and affect them in different ways), and the… for lack of a better term, lack of self-belief. (i do think that’s slightly reductive, though; i think neville has always lacked self-confidence because he’s constantly being held to the specific standard of being his father, and that’s something he simply can’t achieve and frankly shouldn’t have to; and i think eddie’s been conditioned and shaped by his mother his entire life to not expect himself to be able to embody the values he holds, because he’s ‘sick’, and bravery is for other people, like bill, like richie (eddie is 10x braver than richie, but richie is Loud and Present, and something in that feels like bravery to eddie sometimes; richie is ambitious and has dreams and reaches higher than any of them, and eddie listens to him speak and the absolute magnetism in his voice, and even though he can see the flaws in the plans that nobody else is pointing out, he still listens, still believes), not him…. except, well, it constantly is. like, even ignoring his big brave moments and just thinking abt the conditioning and abusive parenting he endured… he was constantly rebelling in little ways, in little moments? which is a marked difference to how neville navigates the world for the majority of the series—-because he absolutely grows a mouth at the end of it all, and he has his brave, stubborn moments, where he’s scared but steps forward anyway, but those are always Things, not exactly like eddie’s quiet constant rebellions)

but! there’s definitely something in terms of how their Big Brave Moments manifest. 

“It’s just a fucking Eye! Fight It! You hear me? Fight It, Bill! Kick the shit out of the sucker! Jesus Christ you fucking pussies I’m doing the Mash Potatoes all over It AND I GOT A BROKEN ARM!”

&

“Yeah,” said Neville. “That’s how I got this one,” he pointed at a particularly deep gash in his cheek, “I refused to do it. […] I got this one,” he indicated another slash to his face, “for asking her how much Muggle blood she and her brother have got.”“Blimey, Neville,” said Ron, “there’s a time and a place for getting a smart mouth.”“You didn’t hear her,” said Neville. “You wouldn’t have stood it either. The thing is, it helps when people stand up to them, it gives everyone hope. I used to notice that when you did it, Harry.”“But they’ve used you as a knife sharpener,” said Ron, wincing slightly as they passed a lamp and Neville’s injuries were thrown into even greater relief.Neville shrugged.“Doesn’t matter. They don’t want to spill too much pure blood, so they’ll torture us a bit if we’re mouthy but they won’t actually kill us.”

i don’t think either of these are necessarily their bravest moments (i mean, eddie literally dies for his friends & neville fucking defies voldemort in front of everyone and later decapitates nagini) but they’re the two that came to mind immediately for comparative purposes. there’s just something about the way they’re the ones who Stand Up, and Stand For something, and inspire everyone else to as well. and there’s an absolute lack of self-consciousness here, of self-doubt. it’s just unadulterated bravery, and what needs to be done. (to be fair: neville does state he doesn’t believe he’s at risk of death, whereas eddie clearly is & also pushes everyone because they’re at risk of death… but counterpoint: i don’t actually believe that neville’s pureblood status would actually have saved him, not at the rate he was going, and definitely not in battle or war, and he kept on going anyway.)

i guess where i’m at with this is… there are similarities in how their bravery can manifest in Big Moments, but i think due to their differences in experience (bc there are def similarities in their experiences, but the details that differ affect them immensely), they’re not actually… character parallels. that said, i do tend to think that with the losers, mapping them onto specific hp characters is a much more Trying (and perhaps not as interesting) task than exploring their houses in general, so it’s totally possible that it’s just my mindset that makes this harder for me. also VERY totally possible that you were just hoping for a pithy answer and i fucking sprung all of this on you, i’m so sorry fdshjkllhjk

tl;dr —- i think neville wouldn’t be able to defeat It, at least not as a child, whereas eddie’s the loser who It is Most Afraid Of

#did any of this make sense?? idk #i drag half a can of coke to try make my head sit straight for responding here #long post // #eddie kaspbrak #media parallels #answered #neville longbottom #ig #Anonymous #v open 2 being wrong/convinced in other directions here tho if anyone else has Thoughts #my brain is still dead from capitalism tbh #prev. richietozler #abuse ment // #parental abuse ment // #emotional abuse ment //