#pikatm

We get to see the interior of Saturn's house this episode! It's very pretty, full props to whoever built it.

The house is built almost entirely out of brown blocks, but all the decor is pink and green. There's an abundance of cherry saplings for such a small space — I think I counted six? — as well a few candles. In fact, there's sapling(s) and/or candles in basically every shot. Especially when the conversation turns serious. The window, where the majority of the conversation takes place, has a sapling and a candle on either side of it. So does the main entrance door.

And that little detail is where things start getting interesting to me.

What color are cherry saplings? Pink and black. What else is pink and black? Yeah.

I think that the placement of the cherry saplings in this episode represent Quakitus, and Saturn's thoughts about her. And I think the green candles represent Saturn himself — his hoodie is green, his armor trims are green, even his dialogue lines in the captions are green. It follows that the candles would represent him.

So, with that in mind, the framing in some of these scenes becomes really interesting. Particularly when Pika first barges through the door—

Pika barges in here and cuts between the cherry sapling and the green candles in order to get inside. He is literally cutting in between Saturn and Quakitus, which becomes even more relevant when we find out he's only here on a mission from Div — who is of course the biggest source of the rift between the two. It's a very aggressive physical representation of how Div is using Pika to separate Saturn and Q from one another!

Another interesting point is when they walk toward the table, and Pika first mentions Q — Saturn's head drops, near-imperceptibly, toward the sapling in front of him.

Throughout most of the conversation, Pika is standing next to the green candles (because he's talking to and thinking about Saturn) but Saturn is standing next to the cherry sapling (because he may be talking to Pika, but the only person he's thinking about is Q).

Additionally, there's a point in the episode where the perspective switches, and Saturn himself is placed as a barrier between the candle and the cherry tree! And it's at the very moment when he first criticizes Q for her behavior! He rants to Pika, "Half the people— no, half the friends I've made have been toxic, liars, manipulators... I mean COME ON, Q!"

And he LOOKS at the sapling! When he's talking about Div and the other manipulative friends he's had in the past, he looks at Pika, but when he talks about Q, he turns to face the sapling! And then the perspective switches to him standing between it and the green candles! For once this isn't Pika or Div coming between Saturn and Quakitus' friendship; it's Saturn himself, with his own personal grievances toward Q's overreactions.

Then once Saturn and Pika talk a little more, Saturn agrees to help Div, puts on his armor and goes to leave the house. Then the camera places him between the candles and the sapling once again—

He takes one final look at his house (where the pink and green mingle together freely), hovers for a moment in the doorway (where you can still see pink and green, but they're separated by where he's standing), then finally says "I'm... so tired." and shuts the door to go help Div. With that, he cuts off his view of the colors entirely.

Again. I'm not sure how intentional these design/framing choices were, I might be reading into it too much. But either way, they're very cool. Unserious SMP is — as I expected — getting steadily more intentional with its camera angles and design choices, and I am a huge fan of that.

(Additional note #1: Saturn's house is lit very gloomily overall, which is a choice I really like. When Saturn complains about Pika's bright yellow armor trims ruining his "cozy, cottagecore aesthetic" it works in two ways the literal way, because Pika's armor is actually clashing with the house's pink and green decor; and also more symbolically, because Pika and Div's choices clash with Saturn and Quakitus' friendship.)