#honestly i always liked how the two have gigantic shiny eyes as a defining character trait without being given a fantastical color for it

[whataboutfractions]

brown eyes distance shot

[tumblunni]

....Man, I think Haunter is my favourite pokemon again. I usually have a brief period of each generation’s best new ghostie temporarily stealing the number one spot, but i usually tend to lose the hype for them around a year later and they join my just Gigantic Pile Of Second Favourites I Cannot Choose Between And then I used to dislike Sableye, Banette and Rotom but they all took the top fave spot as soon as I was like ‘hey if i actually use on on my team maybe I’ll like it- I REALLY LIKE IT’. but I mean, when i love them more because of my personal one i had on my team, or my headcanons or fanfics or etc, I think maybe that’s a dishonest fave cos they’re not my fave on their own benefits? And Rotom stayed in the top fave spot for a really long time cos it not only had a lot of love as my main heavy hitter in platinum but also has a big role as the main mon of one of my fave characters. And like five other fave characters in random anime one off episodes! And then it was a pokedex! EVERYTHING ROTOM TOUCHES TURNS TO GOLD

Buuuuuuuuut.... Haunter was like.. My Original Favourite My first favourite pokemon was pikachu, and then chansey, but Haunter was my first favourite ghost and it says a lot that it still holds up even all these generations later when the type finally got fleshed out with as many members as other types. Man its so funny in retrospect that I’m pretty defined as The Super Ghost Fan nowadays but I wasn’t really into them for the first three generations of pokemon. There just wasnt ANYONE except the haunter line in gen 1, and only misdreavus got added, and then in gen 3 I didnt initially like banette’s design in its first pretty awful sprite so i felt like duskull was the only good one and i didnt like its evolutions. Another reason to love sinnoh: it added great ghosties, evolutions for past ones, and made a lot of past ones available at the same time, and i mean we got our first ghost legendary too! The generation of spoop hype! (until kalos was even more of that, but it was less of a big deal cos ghosts werent so rare now)

ANYWAY Haunter is REALLY GOOD AND GREAT Its design is so simple yet perfect?? Like I know it was designed to be one of the most literal middle evolutions ever, its just meant to be basically.. half of gengar. With its oldest pokedex entries that was back before they really decided what they wanted to do with the ghost type, it was all ‘its a mysterious creature from an unknown dimension and nobody is sure if its a real ghost’. So its unclear whether its design is really meant to be the head pokemon gastly growing its first baby arms, or like.. all three stages are the same pokemon slowly emerging into our dimension, with Gengar being the true form? In any case, I never really felt Gengar was very special, aside from the fan theory it’s a doppelganger of clefable. (I mean its name is literally a mispelling of doppelganger!) like.. it always felt like a letdown of a final form? it would be so great on its own, its just a nice solid silly ‘monster under the bed’ type of ghost, a fluffy bugbear with a lot of sass and the minor original trait of its face being super big and kinda in the wrong place compared to clefable. Makes you imagine it scares people by going full cleff mimic and then just turning around in an alleyway XD I actually had a fan pokemon as a kid called Gambal which was literally just a chansey equivelant of gengar, and had powers of bad luck and stuff. But then the name ended up going to an entirely different fakemon instead who was a rabbit thing that was a game corner prize. Oh and I also had a geng of celebi! Called Tanka just cos that was my name for all my ocs at the time. Its just a type of poetry that i thought sounded Hella Cool for no logical reason. But yeah, I drew like a million pics of every pokemon as a ghost version and its just funny how subconciously i was a ghost fan even before there were more than four ghosts in existance XD

BUT WHERE WAS I Oh yeah, gengar is dissappointing! And its unfair cos if it was an unrelated pokemon on its own, I would like it! It just doesn’t hold up favourably to how awesome haunter and gastly’s concepts are. i mean, look here we have two different quality takes on the ‘floating head’ concept and then its final form isn’t a floating head. HOW DARE YOU. I guess gengar kinda still keeps the aesthetic with its oversized face, kinda? Like its a giant head just mimicing being a regular pokemon? But I mean i think a giant head with arms and legs stops being a giant head. Its why Nanimon and Mamemon aren’t as cute as regular sperical types. I think the only exception is when its a giant head with ONLY legs, and they’re small rabbit legs specifically- like Lotad or Tokomon!

Anyway, nowadays I’ve grown more appreciation for Gengar (again) because I had one in my team and I love him so I can’t not love my best friend. He has an interesting story cos he’s actually That One Haunter, lol! That memorable npc in DPPt who trades you a haunter but its holding an everstone so it doesn’t evolve. I was still equally annoyed at her even though I’d planned to press B and keep it as a haunter anyway! XD But then the cute default name Gaspar made me get really attatched to him, and man i have so many super detailed story and personality headcanons for this little goofball. Eventually he did actually evolve into Gengar, cos I traded him temporarily to a friend in order to transfer him between generations, and i forgot gengar was a trade evo so i didnt tell her to not do it. I still feel really bad that i overreacted about it, i worry that maybe I made her feel guilty! Ultimately, it was probably a good thing, because I kept my other bestie Reaper the Sneasel unevolved forever cos i dislike Weavile, and like.. obviously he kinda sucks in battle because of this. I still love all my pokemon regardless of whether they’re useful in competitive, tho! Oh and mega gengar is pretty sweet, too! It brings back a lot of haunter’s appeal! I just wish that i never saw its feet, seriously. I thought that it was just a head and arms again, but apparantly it just spends 99% of the time phased into objects and its legs just look really awful and unfitting when you see them. It makes it like a top heavy buff design and that really doesn’t work?? It sucks cos i LOVE the other ‘skipped leg day’ pokemon Mega Swampert, so i dunno why I don’t like the same thing on ghosts! Dusknoir and Jellicent are my least favourite ghosts ever. So yeah my opinion on gengar now is like... mixed? i don’t dislike it like I used to, but I don’t really love it on its own benefits or anything, i just don’t dislike it cos i associate it with a sweet and cute bestie who saved me a lot in sinnoh due to his hypnosis attack. But I still think it’s a worse design than haunter, which is The Best Design In All Of Pokemon. Even when I flip flop on what my favourite POKEMON is, I still think it’s my favourite design! Rotom is maybe the most creative design CONCEPT amoung the ghosts, but Haunter is just... so good at what it set out to do.

LETS TALK AGAIN ABOUT HOW GREAT HAUNTER IS I mean just LOOK AT IT, its just SO GOOD Floating heads are great, and gastly was a great way to take that concept and make it ghostly! And its so cool that its basically a hitodama/will of the wisp/generic spooky flame face from every jrpg ever, except made more original because its made of like.. pure darkness smog mist instead. The colour choices for it are really good too, i always really loved the dithering effect they used to make it in the sprite-based games! Its one of the few pokemon where i love the regualr better than the shiny, even though the shiny isn’t one of those terrible neon green ones. It has one of the best shinies and that shade of smoky purple still captures my heart more! i think i would prefer the shiny if regular gengar was bedsheet white though, not blue and only turning white when it mega evolves. That’s weird. AND THEN HAUNTER IS JUST AN EVEN BETTER FLOATING HEAD It loses the cool smoke but it gains these pointy ears/cliche vampire hair shaped head protrusions that just work SO WELL. Like its a floating head that isn’t just a plain sphere! That’s the one part of floating head monsters that generally sucks, a lot of them outside of the creativity of pokemon tend to be super samey generic bald spherical angry man heads. A floating head of a guy with a cliche horror B-movie hairstyle is great! And especially when its a really unhumanoid jack-o-lantern face that’s just like.. replicating that hairstyle without actually being a hairstyle. thats my fave kind of humanoid type pokemon, I love when they’re still animals or monsters or even inanimate objects that are MIMICKING humans, not just a lazy thing that looks like an actual human wearing a costume. I’m probably in the minority but this is why I prefer Mr Mime to stuff like Machamp or Delfox or Incineroar. And then also I love how it takes Gastly’s grumpy eyes and softens them a bit to look more mischeivious instead of angry. Looking always in a bad mood is probably the biggest reason i don’t like Gastly the most, i just feel sad for it. Another reason why I love sinnoh lol, it had a big happy mischief face on its sprite! (shame platinum ruined it a bit, but HGSS was even cuter) And then its just such a creative way of giving a floating head some limbs while not ruining its floating head aesthetic. Floaty rayman arms is such a ghostly thing even though there arent many ghosts that use that design aesthetic!

Honestly thats the biggest reason haunter is so great, really. it just.. encapsulates ghost, even though it doesnt have like ANY cliche ghost design elements! its such a good original concept for like the simplest and most basic pure image of ghostliness in this world. It somehow feels like its exactly what ghosts are, without taking any shortcuts from other popular ghost characters. its so simple and iconic! Its a new thing that could fit in perfectly with all those ancient B-movie creatures and I’d never question it! Gastly is at least slightly based on a will o wisp, and gengar is a bugbear/monster under the bed/shadow creature/doppelganger super combination creature. But in the aim of making something in-between the two, they accidentally made something that doesn’t look very much like ANY of them and stands out miles above them! I think this entire evolution line has had such great staying power because every member of it looks really distinct from the others, while also vaguely fitting together with theme and colourscheme so they don’t seem distinct in a BAD way. Any of these would be equally beloved as entirely separate mons, but linking them together makes them oddly endearing as a weird ragtag bunch of buddies! Its like the addams family!

Oh, but my one and only complaint is that Haunter’s gameboy era design looks better than how it got changed once the graphics got better.

To be entirely honest, I think that the changed version was their intent right from the beginning, and the cooler aesthetic one was just an accident of the limited graphics. Cos I mean the anime had that design from the beginning, after all! BUT STILL, I love it so much more and I wish it could have been proper canon. or at least remained as its shiny form or something! (A mild blue hint instead of a mild purple hint is really boring, this shiny only looks good on gastly...) The glowy outline is probably the best part, though i do also like how the colours stay more matched with gastly instead of the smog colour becoming the body colour. Actually its not even that, its just a random less appealing deep purple, it might have been cooler if it remained that lighter shade of lilac? Also it sucks that haunter retained the glow around its hands at least in the gameverse until we got 3D models. It never had that in the anime so i guess they removed it to remain consistant but like.. WHY! It doesn’t look as cool with red glow on purple as opposed to purple glow on black, but I still really liked it. Like you could have at least kept the glow when it uses attacks or something?

Oh, and isn’t it so weird that so many ghosts have had all black removed from their design as the generations go on? Like.. I mean I don’t think they did this to haunter cos they feared it was similar to Jynx, it isn’t remotely humanoid and it doesn’t have a stereotypical face or anything. And it wouldnt make sense cos they kept it on gastly. But then also banette has gone from black to an increasingly lighter grey, and its EEEEEEEVEN lighter on merchandising! I waited ages for an official banette plush, and it is a really sweet little thing thats so perfect... but then its light grey? I don’t mind cos it makes my plushie feel like more of an individual at least. Also its annoying that mega banette started off as the same dark grey/black that banette originally was, but then its one of the few pokemon that got a big change between XY and SuMo, aside from new animations and stuff. now its light grey too! Booooooo! Other ghosts that’ve experienced The Greying: Duskull, Dusknoir already started off lighter than its pre-evo and then still got more so as time went on, and Misdreavus turned green and then blue instead of grey but its still the same sort of thing. Now the only real black/dark grey ghosts we have left are Yamask and Phantump, and its just.. so weird?? Cos like none of the black dark-types have had big colour changes except Sneasel. I dunno, maybe they’re doing this to make the ghost and dark types more distinct, making it more like purple is the signature colour of ghosts? But I mean its the type icon colour for poison and psychic too so this just makes the colourschemes LESS distinct... Also I just think that the dark grey banette and the black haunter looked so much better, so it sucks that out of all the ghosts it had to be the ones I love! And out of all dark types it had to be my favourite too! (And sneasel is my fave ice type too!)

...anyway GHOSTS and HAUNTER I LOVE THEM and I’m sorry i rambled for like an hour writing all this THEYRE JUST SO FUCKING CUTE AND SWEET

oh and one last thing!! I love how haunter established the trend of ghost types being more mischievious and misunderstood than actually evil Well, i mean all three of its evo line starred in that episode of the anime, but Haunter was the one that went with ash at the end and got one more episode of cuteness afterward. That whole mini arc was the MOST MEMORABLE PART OF THE SHOW for me, I couldnt believe it was so short when i rewatched it! I totally misremembered haunter sticking around for half a season or something, cos it was so endearing to me. And its still so endearing to me every time the games decide to make a new ghost be harmless or sad, or harmless and sad. or even harmful and sad! i mean i cried the most at banette even though its past of being an abandoned toy is supposed to just be a justification why its the most angry and dangerous ghost. I’M SURE I COULD HEAL IT WITH HUGS, yells bunni, as they essentially glomp the pokemon equivelant of a shark...

god i just love ghosts so much and specifically haunter the most much hug your haunter today also your banette also your rotom also pumpkaboo and litwick and phantump and duskull...