🏳️‍🌈 My Little Reblog Corner 🏳️‍🌈

Tupandactylus imperator with Ginkgo huolinhensis. Both species from the Early Cretaceous. There is an interesting paper which discusses how pterosaur pycnofibres may be synonymous with bird feathers featuring T. imperator. Cool stuff!

Sick! Thanks @krowbby

Beheeyem, ever since its reveal, has been one of my top favorite Pokemon. This Pokemon has more references packed into it than an episode of Family Guy. Not only that, but these two Pokemon represent a subject I’m largely interested in: speculative biology, and in particular, extra-terrestrials. These intergalactic immigrants have quite a history behind their inspiration, so let’s just charge right into it. 

Let’s start with what we know. Elgyem and Beheeyem are, obviously, based on the concept of extra-terrestrials, or “aliens” as they’re more often referred to in popular culture. Their cries even sound like sci-fi UFO tractor beams. Our planet Earth is the only celestial body we know has ever been host to life. Despite the odds of at least one more of the countless planets in the universe having developed life, and the speculated possibility of infinite universes in which this could be true, life outside of our little blue planet has never been confirmed to even be a reality. And yet, since Antiquity at least, we have gazed up at the stars and pondered the age-old question: “Are we alone?" 

Regardless of whether or not we are indeed alone, it’s unlikely that evolutionarily-produced extra-terrestrial life would take a form very similar to us humans. Even the Sefer Habrit of the Talmud tells us to not expect otherworldly life to resemble anything on Earth. However, when we hear close encounter stories of those who claim to have interacted with aliens or see these beings in science fiction movies, we typically see them depicted as strikingly humanoid. This may be the result of an innate bias in ourselves to anthropomorphize what we think of as intelligent, and given the assumption of alien visitors’ ability to travel across vast spans of space, we would assume them to be intelligent.     We also expect them to be intelligent enough not to invade a planet that’s composed of 75% of what kills them and to be able to open doors.  

As proposed by Dr. Steven Novella, because we assume aliens would be highly intelligent, we often depict them with traits we associate with intelligence. Starting with a humanoid body plan, we tend to give them expanded craniums but physically weak bodies, large eyes, sufficiently advanced technology (Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator included), and very often, telepathy and psychic abilities. A large amount of abduction and level three encounter accounts accredit communication with visitors to telepathy. The common theme of aliens possessing psychic abilities and high intelligence would perfectly explain the Psychic-type possessed by Elgyem and Beheeyem, especially considering the type’s association with intelligence in the Pokemon series. 

Those "intelligent” physical characteristics are expectations we apply to ourselves as well. In 1893, famed writer HG Wells published a newspaper article titled “The Man of the Year Million” in which he projected that humans would eventually evolve to best suit their defining strength: their intelligence. Our heads would “swell” as he put it, our eyes grow, our bodies wither and thin. Teeth would disappear as we don’t need them to eat the food our ancestors did. Muscles would be nonexistant due to our increasingly relaxed lifestyles. Wells’ popular accompanying illustration of his “future man” reflected much of the exaggerated traits of intelligence we assume, and bares a not-so-coincidental resemblance to the popular image of ETs. 

  He’s single, ladies.  

This image became popular in the early twentieth century, and it may have ingrained itself in the public conscious well enough to influence the way we imagine aliens. Even today, some speculate that purported “aliens” are actually just time-travelling humans from the future. 

In the first half of the twentieth century, aliens began to enter popular culture for the first time. Perhaps the most famous story of supposed real-life alien encounters is that of the 1947 Roswell incident, in which something - supposedly a UFO or “flying saucer” as they were called at that time - crash-landed in the desert of New Mexico. Dismissed as a grounded weather balloon by the US government, conspirators still insist that evidence was confiscated and sent to the ever esoteric Area 51 in Nevada, where the “alien craft” was researched and possibly even reverse-engineered. Many reports claim that the bodies of alien pilots, having not survived the impact, were also taken from the site and autopsied at Area 51. Elgyem’s Pokemon White Pokedex flavor text makes a direct tie-in to this urban legend.  “This Pokémon had never been seen until it appeared from far in the desert 50 years ago." 

Interestingly enough, Roswell wasn’t the first such recorded incident of a UFO crash. The mid-to-late 1890s saw a boom in reports of unorthodox, usually cigar-shaped aircraft roaming the skies of the American West. This culminated in the Aurora, Texas incident of 1897, 50 years before Roswell, in which a Dallas newspaper claimed that an unidentified flying machine crash-landed into a windmill, leaving behind the body of a "Martian” pilot. The alien was reportedly given a Christian burial at the town cemetery, and today the premises contains a Texas Historical Commission marker making note of the incident. I find it interesting that despite the Pokedex mentioning Elgyem’s discovery in the desert, the little alien is actually instead found in Unova’s Celestial Tower, a cemetery for Pokemon. 

Popularized by media coverage of the Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter, the term “little green men” became an established term for aliens in the public lexicon by the mid-1950s. The typical image of a being from outer space soon took on established traits such as green skin and a diminutive frame, borrowing characteristics of traditional creatures such as the famed gremlins of World War II lore, still very memorable at the time. Insectoid characteristics were also often thrown into the mix, with antennae and/or bug-like eyes. Elgyem takes on the role of representing the Little Green Man cliche of this era, with its greenish pallor, small size, and pseudo-insectoid eyes. As I’m sure is obvious, Elgyem’s name is a pronounced adaptation of the acronym “LGM”, or “Little Green Man”.     The original ancient astronaut 

Public conscious swayed during the mid-1950s throughout the 1960s. The proliferation of science fiction movies in this period called for new special effects and creative new character designs. UFO witness hype in this era contributed to a fervor of fright of alien invaders, and the image of the somewhat non-threatening little green man was replaced by a hodge-podge of various horrific interpretations of aliens. Generally, these monsters were drone-like invaders of grotesque appearance; monsters lusting for blood and of course, our women. It was during this period that the term “Bug-eyed monster” arose. This kind of alien was popularized by the Daleks of Doctor Who fame, and became the cultural favorite of Japan, reflected in the anime Yokai Ningen Bem, which is likely why Japanese video game developer Game Freak ended up creating Elgyem’s evolutionary form. 

Of course, “bug-eyed monster”, or “BEM”, is used in the same scheme as Elgyem’s name, serving as the basis of the second form in this line’s name: Beheeyem. However, though Beheeyem seems to play the BEM role straightly enough, it really seems to take most of its design from the last popular type of alien: greys.     Greys, named for their skin color (though green is still sometimes seen), are the most commonly seen (both according to “abductees” and the media) type of alien today. They fit the “intelligence” criteria discussed earlier, and are known for abductions, genetic experimentation and anal probing of abductees, and finally, leaving said abductees in the middle of nowhere with a severe sense of time loss. And cattle mutilation, of course. They seem to fall somewhere in an average between the maliciousness of the BEMs and the benevolence/harmlessness of the LGMs. The image of greys as the de facto alien design was largely inoculated by the 1977 Steven Spielberg film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which in turn was heavily inspired by the tale of Barney and Betty Hill. The Hill’s story was a breakthrough for its time, being the first nationally-printed news story of an alien abduction. Betty, after she and her husband were supposedly abducted in 1961, claimed to later have dreams of conversing with aliens during a physical examination aboard their craft. This isn’t the first story accounting grey-like aliens, but it certainly helped to confirm their status in the public conscious. Notable about the incident is the couple’s purported memory loss, which has become an abduction staple, contributing to Beheeyem’s noted ability to selectively “switch off” individual brain cells in other organisms, allowing it to wipe the memories of those it encounters. 

Appearance-wise, Beheeyem is more cleverly modern than its preceding form. Appearing to wear a trench coat, sunglasses/goggles and a large hat or helmet, Beheeyem evokes an image of the suit-and-shades wearing Men in Black, infamous for covering up UFO phenomena. At the same it, it seems to play off of the theme of aliens either hiding or integrating in human society, wearing disguises to appear human. 

Urban legend aside, Beheeyem draws even more of its inspiration from the media. Its shiny form’s red, blue, and green fingers evoke images of the distinctive multi-colored faces of the invaders in the 1953 War of the Worlds film, based on the Wells book; both distinctive codifiers for extra-terrestrial focused media. In addition, the Pokemon is also credited with speaking its own language, communicating with others of its species through an odd series of flashes from its illuminated fingers, very much like the “five tones” communication, accompanied by flashing lights, used by the visitors in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Its evolution from Elgyem at level 42 seems too oddly suspicious for me to believe this detail was not at least partially intended as a reference to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where the number 42 is prominently known as "The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything". One of its abilities, Synchronize, has the in-game effect of having the opponent mirror any status conditions Beheeyem may be suffering from. This may be an homage to Spielberg’s classic ET film, known for its alien protagonist who forms links with others, causing them to share emotions, pain, and even illnesses. 

That’s all I really have to say on the subject. There are plenty of less obvious connections to be made, but I could talk about this stuff for a while, so I’ll just end it here. Anyway, these are just two Pokemon I really like, and I feel went under appreciated when Black and White were released. There’s a lot of consideration to references in this two-stage family, and I feel it’s always fun to probe for them.