astercontrol:

okay so I have talked before about how much I love Kevin Flynn’s place, with the rainbows everywhere

the rainbow neon sign that was right over his head when Alan and Lora found him.

his apartment with the whole row of rainbow flags over the door, alternating rectangular and curved, not catching the eye at first because their colors are muted in the shadows…

and then the… whatever it is… little rainbow decoration that gets ALL the light in the room…

but I have watched this movie so many times that I’ve progressed beyond “haha look how much this guy loves rainbows”

to start actually asking myself

what is that thing anyway?

(lol, you know I have watched this movie soooo many times when I have started fixating on the decor more than the… main course here)

anyway

first glance I thought the spots of color were beads.

then I thought they were big huge rhinestones or something

but I’ve looked at it again and again, and I am pretty sure they’re concave.

It’s like a piece of wood with… painted indentations

like a mancala board? but with the wrong number of rows. could it be some other kind of game?

…does even Kevin know what it is? or did he just find it and hang it up on his wall with no idea what it’s for because hey, rainbow!

anyway

I KNOW that

the thing my mind keeps telling me…

…is NOT the thing it is.

can’t be.

doesn’t even actually look like it.

No idea why it sets off that pattern recognition in me.

i don’t HAVE any reference for what it could really be. I don’t know what adult guys were decorating their houses with, back in 1982.

because in 1982, I was a toddler.

and

I had an abacus at home for that.

ahh, Kevin Flynn.

…while it’s still St Patrick’s Day for a couple more hours… here he is being a silly leprechaun with his pot of gold under the rainbow.

This rainbow is at least better-identified– it seems to represent a game called “Intruder.”

Funny how he ends up being the intruder in the digital world, later on.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m inclined to interpret all the rainbows partially as foreshadowing– a callback to Dorothy singing “Over the Rainbow” before her own isekai adventure.

…after all, she, too, made friends in that magic world… manmade entities who had been made without brain or heart, but managed to grow working equivalents on their own.