Good Will Hunting - Tumblr Posts

12.10.21

“My head is bloody, but unbowed.” —William Ernest Henley

As a disclaimer, I am still further behind in my schoolwork than I should be, but if I fail I will know I gave it my all. I finished nearly a week’s worth of classwork for linguistics, studied for the LSAT, and took care of my mental health. And for the grand finale…

“Gentlemen, as of this moment, I am that second mouse.” —Catch Me If You Can

I received an awesome scholarship for maintaining a high average in my classes last year. Emotional displays are not within my repertoire of skills, but I assure you I am feeling many emotions.

“My boy’s wicked smart.” —Good Will Hunting

Listening to:

everything sucks—vaultboy

notes app today:

Good will hunting

The first fight with the kindergarten boys was cringe af, go Matt Damon (aka cutie)

M something headphones? (Not related)

- or vintage headphones (idfk)

Good Will Hunting

1997

as a born-n-raised southern Californian (specifically the area around LA + Hollywood, which is relevant), Chappell Roan's California messes me up in a subtly in the lyrics i dont think non-Californians will get (or at least people who DON'T live in a climate that is similar to what we got going on in that vague LA, Hollywood, valley-area)

like everybody who loves this song knows the whole 🎶"No leave are brown"🎶 lyric is a reference to California Dreamin' by The Mamas & The Papas' lyric 🎶"The leaves are brown and the sky is gray"🎶 and that is true

and, this will seem like a tangent but i have point: im Indigenous American, and i will seldom stand up for the USA against other countries' criticisms (tho i do have "glass houses, my guy. have you checked if you live in one?" thoughts about it, but that'd be SUPER tangential to get into); but i DO feel my hands turn to fists when anyone, an American from another territory or a foreigner from any other country, pokes judgementally at California. like i either have or almost have unsubbed from youtubers or tiktokers who have voiced bitter opinions about California. and i mention this bc those people would probably joke "lol 🎶'no leaves are brown'🎶 bc, in California, they are plastic, their trees' leaves cannot turn brown" liKE?? FUCK YOU, NO. THAT'S ACTUALLY KINDA THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT I AM ABOUT TO SAY HERE. BITE ME. YOU DONT GET IT

bc that line, 🎶"No leaves are brown"🎶 has a different impact as someone who has grown up in the relative area she is singing about

but if either you yourself or else your parents/guardians/older family members were in California in even the 80s, much less the 70s or earlier... you know fire-season is a brand new thing we have to deal with it. you know drought-season is the same. it's a weird political thing where they try to normalize for us these global-warming things, make us less scared of them if we see them as cyclical

which might be a surprise for non-Californians, as many have this odd image of California as "both a city and a desert × beach" when it's not. it's got cities, yes, it's got a coast, obviously, and it has deserts, yeah, AND it has a shit ton of mountains and hills EVERYWHERE, it has valleys, farms, rural mountain towns, "hicks" and "hillbillies" ontop of our 🤟surfer-dudes🏄‍♂️ and influencer/actor-culture stereotypes, ski lodges, boonies, reservations, national parks, and northern California is part of the Pacific North-West, you drive literally in any direction and within 2 to 4 hours, youll be in a whole different climate. this state is so huge that i remember my family trying to do roadtrips to Canada (bc we were too broke to fly, woah, who said that) and itd take over a week to get from my soCal hometown to Washington state alone. and im not that deep south in soCal; LA and whatnot is part of the northern-most area of soCal. it'd still be over a week of driving for 8+ hours. and we'd face sleet, hail, snow, rain, and insane winds on the way. which sounds like im exaggerating, but the reason why we stopped doing those roadtrips was because my mom (who is from MICHIGAN) couldn't stand driving through snow and rain anymore, again, before we even hit Washington state ("if you guys do get rain and snow then why does California still have that on/off drought then?" bc water from norCal doesn't trickle down for a 1+ week through all of central-Cali over in the same buckets to soCal naturally, makes sense)

so we, in this pocket of California Chappell Roan is singing about, arent SUPPOSED to have brown leaves is what im saying. but we are. we have TOO MANY brown leaves, actually. that's what happens to plants in a drought, they brown and die; and then we get at-risk for the false-normalcy that is fire-season. those brown leaves in overabundance is those wildfires' kindling. even in rural mountain-towns where there are evergreen trees, bc LA and Hollywood's area does have mountains that get some HEAVY snow and rain, to the point where houses often get snowed in ("wait, but the drought—?" fam, it just won't come down the mountains. idk why the weather is like that except ✨️general global-warming reasons✨️. and the water doesnt trickle down bc, down the mountains, is so hot normally that a lot of that shit evaporates. sometimes, we get "lucky" and the "global warming happens in extremes both ways" thing means those mountains will get SUCH BAD snow that the hot af valleys can get enough water for the drought to temporarily be "off". but that shit doesnt stick, and thank fuck for that bc these mountain towns cant stand THAT bad snow ALL the time, so the drought comes back), there will still be dead pine-needles and other evergreens in overabundance across these woods' floor, and more and more and more will fall bc the nature of a drought and how HOT it gets and that shit can catch on fire EASY

and let's pretend for a second that there are no rural mountain towns in the LA and Hollywood region (there are) but let's pretend there arent. i grew up in a college-town full of trees, at least one per house, in the valley of that region. we still get seasons. flowers bloom, red and orange leaves, brown leaves, leaflessly bare trees, i just personally never experienced snow in my hometown. i grew up associating winter with rain, and i genuinely frowned in upset if i didnt get rain on Christmas (still do. even when i wasnt in my hometown. rainy Christmas beats "white Christmas" or "green Christmas" every time for me). so we do get seasons, we still get all the trees' seasonal forms. we just are also heavy on "throw your leaves away, rake it all up, fire-season is around the corner!" types of stuff

but even if you went with stereotypical "oh, but the palm trees tho?" type of trees, in a fantasy where that's somehow the only tree in California: that shit is ever-green, but that doesn't mean it is plastic. the leaves still brown and fall. we just p immediately get rid of them since they're SO BIG that they can cause issues with foot-traffic and are annoying as hell to drive over. so you dont see them too often, not like other ever-greens, where youll easily see a shitton of pine-needles or whatever around. and thank fuck for it, bc rats nest in palm-trees and i always freak about the mostly-irrational fear of one falling by me with a rat; and seeing either a rat die from the fall or the spooked and confused rat possibly attack me. like. to the point that unless i can see a dead palm-tree leaf is fully flat, i give that shit a WIDE berth bc im scared of a spooked or dead rat being under it OR of another leaf falling. and palm-trees being evergreen means those leaves fall all-year-round, randomly, there's no season. so, again, not like that shit is plastic or like it is impossible to see a dead palm-tree leaf around. so that's not the "no leaves here are turning brown, wtf" happening either

and, as a quick aside, before someone from Missouri says it: i am aware y'all ALSO have fire-season/s, burn bans, and your trees sometimes are also unintentionally creating kindling. it's just not AS infamous as California's, because we don't have a "yearly drought" but instead have this 365-day-long drought that has brief "off-periods" of being over before returning in less than 4, 6 months. it's not a competition, bc fire-season is fucked up either way. it's just "we have more dead leaves than y'all nc of that on/off drought" is all im saying. not about how bad/worse whose fire-season is, that shit's fucked. bUT I'LL BRING UP HOW MISSOURI ALSO HAS A FIRE-SEASON, JUST WAIT

so why does this line fuck me up??? if leaves ARE brown in California?

exactly that. (ill explain) (..obviously lol)

i think that's the point of the line 🎶"No leaves are brown"🎶. not that "tee-hee 🤪 california is plastic and never gets seasons 😝 so 'no leaves' CAN 'turn brown' there 😜 heh" kind of "there are NO leaves here turning brown, there's no snow, there's no seasons, everything is 'young' forever" kind of reading. toss that shit out of here, that's not relevant to my personal reading of the song. to me, it's not "none of these leaves are brown"

it's instead "too many of these leaves are brown. leaves are not supposed to be brown all the time" kind of 🎶"No leaves are brown"🎶 (if you need an example of the emphasis shift: we have moved from "No unicorns are here, only horses (unicorns don't exist here)" to more of an "No unicorns are without a horn, there shouldn't just be horses (unicorns do exist here)" type of sentence? bc we have moved from "No leaves are brown, leaves should be turning brown (browning leaves don't exist here)" to instead "No leaves are brown, leaves shouldnt always be brown, leaves should be green in spring and red in autumn (brown leaves exist in overabundance). i hope, if everything else hasn't made the emphasis shift click yet, that breakdown example helps???), like Chappell Roan would— instead of yearning for leaves turning brown and seeing winter— be yearning for leaves turning green, of spring, of rain, of rebirth and youth instead of this "kindling for a fire" (possible phoneix reborn from the ashes) where 🎶"My dying town"🎶 then has a double-meaning of both "my hometown (definition 1: place of your early years) in Missouri is dying (with people like the singer leaving and population dwindling assumedly)" AND "my hometown (definition 2: place of current residence) in California is dying (with brown leaves and fires)". which can then turn the lines about 🎶"Thought I'd be cool in California/I'd make you proud/To think I almost had it going/But I let you down"🎶 and 🎶"Come get me out of California"🎶 to easily twist from "I failed, I messed up" walk-of-shame kind of reasons for why "Thought I'd make you proud by being cool → I let you down" into instead being external reasons of the "This Is Fine" House-On-Fire Dog Meme becoming the "How Could I Ever Think Was Fine?!" House-On-Fire Dog Meme variety. it instead reads as an evacuation, as "i almost got it but all this other stuff happened (like, idk, a wildfire lmao) and i need to leave, help me live, i cant brave this anymore, im sorry for asking for help and letting you down"... with the irony being Missouri ALSO has fire-season. but they just have a fire-season with other forms of weather more consistently everywhere, with less brown leaves. so there is this kind of "Chappell Roan, Missouri isn't where you should run from a fire, there's fires over there too", which just twists the knife about 🎶"My dying town"🎶 for sure since both are capable of burning. but it kind of makes it also more apparent that, hey, both of these places (to live in pursuit of fame OR to live with fame abandoned) will burn away a part of you, and you will panic about the "new devil" and yearn for "the devil you know" twist of "the grass is always greener on the other side". also, the place you grew up will always be special to you and scream of safety in a way. like im saying all this stuff about California, but id write a song wailing about wanting to go back if i ever had to leave it. all of which in turn spins 🎶"'Cause I was never told that I wasn't going to get/The things I want the most/And people always say 'If it hasn't happened yet/Then maybe you should go'"🎶 to now be about wanting to go to Missouri (but can't, as you can hear from the pleas being unanswered and the lack of shift from "Come get me → You've come to get me/I've left/I'm leaving/I'm packing/etc") and people encouraging "maybe you should go to Missouri". but the singer doesnt. Chappell Roan instead writes about someone who wants to leave but isn't leaving. the closest the singer gets is 🎶"Too hard to find reasons to stay/Even true love could not persuade"🎶 but the act of leaving never ACTUALLY happens. the singer pleads but doesn't move. Chappell Roan already wrote about how the singer has 🎶"[T]rade[d] amber clay roads for the/Sea foam and endless sun rays"🎶 and the leaves that are only ever brown and, as a result, will have to remain "stretched across four states" with unanswered pleading

which you could read as "Missouri is mad" and feels "let down" that the singer ever left, not that the singer wasn't able to "be cool in California". i personally see it more as Noah Kahan's You're Going To Go Far 🎶"We ain't angry at you, love/You're the greatest thing we've lost"🎶 and 🎶"The boards will still creak, the leaves will still die/We ain't angry at you, love/We'll be waitin' for you, love/And we'll all be here forever/And we'll all be here forever/You're gonna go far"🎶 or even Chuckie's famous line in Good Will Hunting (1997) about Will's potential that went like "Look, you're my best friend, so don't take this the wrong way but, in 20 years if you're still livin' here, comin' over to my house, watchin' the Patriots games, workin' construction, I'll fuckin' kill ya. That's not a threat, that's a fact, I'll fuckin' kill ya. [...] No. No, no no no. Fuck you, you don't owe it to yourself man, you owe it to me. Cuz tomorrow I'm gonna wake up and I'll be 50, and I'll still be doin' this shit. And that's all right. That's fine. I mean, you're sittin' on a winnin' lottery ticket. And you're too much of a pussy to cash it in, and that's bullshit. 'Cause I'd do fuckin' anything to have what you got. So would any of these fuckin' guys. It'd be an insult to us if you're still here in 20 years. Hangin' around here is a fuckin' waste of your time" or Cinema Paradiso (1988) scene where Alfredo is saying goodbye to Toto and "Don't come back. Don't think about us. Don't look back. Don't write. Don't give in to nostalgia. Forget us all. If you do and you come back, don't come see me. I won't let you in my house. Understand?"/"Thank you. For everything you've done for me."/"Whatever you end up doing, love it. The way you loved the projection booth when you were a little squirt". albeit i never liked the trope assumption of "small town lives never change", esp to the point that entire towns or states would be "waiting" or "a waste of time". i think the Thing is moreso about "sometimes you have to leave, even for just a while, you just have to leave and nobody is going to bring you back early". im more of a Nina, more of a Breathe, from In The Heights, state of mind than i ever would be "someone comes and gets the singer of Chappell Roan's California themselves". you come back when YOU come back. or else you never do. like i said, id be wailing for California, and i know my health will force me to leave it someday since i cant live well in this heat, so im definitely not of a "never come back" OR of a "small town/states are lesser" lens or whatever. but rather that kind of "everybody wants the best for you so badly, for you to at least leave for a while bc thats the best thing for you, that theyll ignore your pleading until you yourself make ACTUAL moves to come back. to follow your dreams, even if it is just for a while and then your dreams or means change, then you must follow that shit wholeheartedly". even though all the examples i gave are of people implied to have never came back, or practically never, if i remember right, in the case of Toto who does briefly return for Alfredo's funeral before returning to his new home elsewhere in Italy. still. my overall point is i dont think the singer's pleas being ignored is malicious. i believe the singer has the agency to leave, and is just momentarily scared of something external that isnt actually That New, but is scared of actually returning (and thereby doesnt use their own agency to evacuate) bc doing so/having left in the first place feels like letting Missouri down...

anyway.

i have a lot of thoughts about California is, i guess, the moral of the story(?). and this song wrecks me to pieces in a way that i dont think a lot of people outside of my homestate will get, yet everyone DOES get with You're Going To Go Far, Breathe from In The Heights, Good Will Hunting, and Cinema Paradiso... not to mention how many double-meanings the ambiguity of these lines have, and how it isn't as straight-forward a song as many assume, and that is BEAUTIFUL. but people keep interpreting what 🎶"No leaves are brown"🎶 means (aka: the plastic trees people) in ways that piss me off so now y'all get this essay

(anyway should i mention how ive wondered before if The Mamas & The Papas were prophetic in how 🎶"The leaves are brown and the sky is gray"🎶 so easily leads into the Californian brand of fire-season, all about the kindling and smoke?? no? okay lol)

Hera *about Athena and Odysseus*: Oh, what is this? Some kind of scaring contest between two kids from the "old neighborhood"?

Athena: Yeah,and I won't talk first

cards.

pairings. will hunting x fem!reader

about. will has a conversation with a woman that's very close in age with him and yet very different.

warnings. swearing

ricky rocks. this movie was the first to ever make me cry. i also hate dumbass people (especially old ones) that come into my work asking me questions that have nothing to do with me. i need a raise atp.

“you’re a therapist?” you watch his face screw up and narrow as if in deep confusion, pointing before it slowly all slips away and is replaced by amusement. he laughs. he laughs in your face proudly, but the laugh doesn't seem genuine, but rather… mocking. “no fuckin’ way, you’re all pulling my leg now.”

your lips are pressed into a thin line as you watch him. you feel a distinct pull in your chest of slight humiliation, but as well sadness; for him.

“how old are you, kid?”

“i’m 22, will. how old are you?”

“22 and you’re doing this,” he shakes his head and you can’t tell if he’s impressed or still mocking you. “how’d you end up here?”

you sigh, leaning back in the chair you sat in, knowing you’d get no where from here, “i played my cards right.”

“yeah, no kidding.”

“you want to tell me how you ended up here?”

he smiled. he smiled like it was funny that he sat in the orange jumpsuit he was in and it was funny that he was screwing himself over, “i didn’t play my cards right.”

“no kidding,” you mumbled, looking at him with the most unimpressed look he had ever received from a stranger. “why?”

“what do you mean, ‘why’?”

“why’re you doing this to yourself?” you mean it. “do you not think you deserve this, that you could do better, be better?”

he doesn’t like that question.

“that’s awefully personal of you, doc. don’t you think you should take me out to dinner first?” he laughs again, but it’s not strong, it’s more nervous than anything.

“will,” you cut off the amusement in his tone, giving him a pointed look. “i’m not here to interrogate you, you know that right?”

“then what are you here for?”

“to talk.”

“about what?”

“whatever you want.”

he scoffs, “if it was whatever i wanted, we wouldn’t be talking at all.”

"what then?"

and then he smirks. his eyes rack you up and down from what he can see sitting across from you, but he keeps his mouth shut. he doesn't have to say anything for you to be able to tell what he's thinking anyways.

you look like a mother with the way annoyance just soaks you like a second skin. he almost regrets even implying such a thing with the way silence simmers uncomfortably between the two of you.

he coughs, "you like what you do?"

you inhale sharply, still staring at him carefully, thinking on how you want to reply to him. you could take one of two different routes; answering honestly, and continuing a conversation as if he was someone you had just met under normal circumstances or turning the question around on him and ultimately getting no where.

"yes, actually, I do."

"why?" he's quick.

"I like helping people."

"I knew you'd say that," he almost grumbles, like what you just said proved something to him. "everyone to ever exist with your exact career always says the same damn thing and you know what? I don't believe it."

you're taken aback, mouth slightly open, "why?"

"because people don't just like helping people out of the goodness of their heart."

"well, maybe people like you don’t."

his head tilts slightly back, you watch a slight curve form on his mouth at your retort, "what's the difference between you and me, huh? what's the little riff that separates us and makes you better than me?"

“i don’t think i’m better than you.”

“but still..? what is it?”

you stare at him, blankly, before you shrug, "well to start off you're a man and-"

"awh, cmon doc," a fake groan resonates from the back of his throat as he cuts you off, obviously fucking with you. "not this sexist shit."

"tell me I'm wrong."

he stays silent, but it's only because he wants to hear you talk.

"it's proven on multiple occasions that women are more empathic than men. it's even proven through animals that there's a seemingly large difference in empathy between genders."

"animals?" he raises a brow, "we're basing our research on animals now?"

"I mean we always have," you can't help but roll your eyes, even as he is still fucking with you, "hormones. if you want a simple basis; hormones. women's hormones are higher, so their empathy levels are higher."

"I see," will nods, but you can see there's still a pressing matter of mischief in his eyes. "you're a woman, so that's why you want to help people and I don't."

"that's not the only reason."

"what're the others then?"

"why don't you tell me?"

he narrows his look on you upon the request. you had trapped him into another question and he felt an actual drive to answer this time.

“you know this really has nothing to do with gender… but the nature we were raised in.”

oh, will hates that.

“what?” he looks relentless, like he’s given up almost, “you want me to tell you that i’ve been abandoned all my life and think our society doesn’t deserve any help? that they’re all pieces of shit and don’t deserve anything more than what they give? that your entire life has been easy, so you don't understand just exactly how fucked up people are.”

he hates how the way you look at him. the way you look content, like you had gotten exactly what you wanted, but there's sympathy; your eyes are soft, and your lips are pressed together in a half frown. that's the only thing that keeps him from not being completely on edge, the soft look of your sympathy.

"is that what you wanted to hear?"

"not necessarily," you fold your hands up on the table. "hearing anything from you would've been fine."

he scoffs, "you goddamn therapists."

"i don't think we're much different at all, actually," you glance at your hands, still folded nicely on the table between you. there's a silence then that you allow to fold up in between the two of you as you think. "life has never been easy, will. i don't think it is for anyone. everyone has their struggles, some of us just face a more... difficult horizon. in the end it only matters with how we deal with it."

he stares at you blankly as you continue to speak.

"you can wake up every day still harvesting that hate for society for whatever it has done to you, and you'll never change, because you hold that hate in your chest, because you don't let people hear you," your eyes go progressively softer, and your head slightly tilts, driving him even more insane. "i was mad for a long time at what my life was, but i became comfortable with it. you can't change what has already been done, but you can make of it what you can."

it's silent.

will thinks about your words more than he intends. having those words spoken to him by someone so similar in age to him made him feel strange, like he was a failure. you seemed to have everything in your life so figured out, as if you were so content with anything that came your way. he doesn't understand how you don't hold hate, how you just let it go as you claim.

"you happy, doc?"

you smile then, "as happy as i allow myself to be."

"you're strange," he chuckled, "you must've never been really fucked over by the world if you just let things roll off you're back."

"what would it matter?" you try to reason. "a person's dog could die and that person could take that harder than if your father were to die. your level of 'fucked' is different to everyone, but it shouldn't matter. you shouldn't feel the need to invalidate someone's feelings, just because yours were continuously. and you shouldn't feel the need to rely on the world to validate your 'fucked up things'."

he feels like he's suffocating from the large amount of empathy you shoved into his ears and down his throat. he had always heard the classic 'you deserve better' speech, but never like this. the way you laid it all out for him put it all to a different level of understanding for him, creating a feeling for guilt that was creeping around his heart for even saying anything remotely ignorant about people's struggles; for thinking he had it worse, that he felt pain more than anyone else.

will feels foolish staring at you. he feels foolish that it took this simple interaction of man sitting across from woman being what it took to make him truly understand he was in control, even his own happiness.

"we really did play our cards differently."

you smile softly, "good thing it's never too late to draw a new one from the deck."

You don’t know about real loss. ‘Cause it only occurs when you’ve loved something more than you love yourself… I doubt you’ve dared to love anybody that much.

GOOD WILL HUNTING (1997) dir. gus van sant

Good Will Hunting // Aesthetics

‘Good Will Hunting’  wip i swear, one day i’ll learn how to stylize 

“Good Will Hunting“ Pt.2

“Good Will Hunting“  finished after almost six months, congrats to me!  the lighting and colour is different bc it was first and foremost a light study

I’m movie lovers🎬🎞️🎥