cashew | Friday, September 27th, 2019

tanithryudo brought up a point in my ranty long post about the economy of fountain pens: What about those people who no longer use writing utensils?

That reminds me of another peeve I have with fountain pen hobbyists.

Fountain pens are, first and foremost, a writing tool. The purpose of promoting fountain pens is to encourage others who write to use fountain pens over their current writing utensil. Those who have, like

tanithryudo, switched over to a purely digital lifestyle are not the target audience. Therefore, I find it extremely aggravating to read fountain pen guides that seem to go out of their way to explain why one should use a fountain pen without acknowledging that a very large portion of the population no longer even use any analogue writing instruments.

Anyway. Because of this, I'm delving into the other end of the fountain pen discussion: Why you should NOT use a fountain pen.

( You should not use a fountain pen if... )

In short, fountain pens are meant for Serious Writers™. Being a Serious Writer™ is a habit formed over the course of a life time. There's nothing particularly special about it. And yes, you can be a Serious Writer™ without a fountain pen.

( For those Serious Writers™ )

Now, of course you can still collect fountain pens without being a Serious Writer™, but you are less qualified to really discuss the advantages/disadvantages of the pen and probably should not be chiming in on these discussions. Your reasons are usually not particularly convincing and are highly personalized to you. And the thing about personalized reasons is that they are often not applicable to anyone else other than yourself, so.

Back off on pushing the fountain pen agenda. Just tell me what the new models are, what their pros and cons are, and I'll decided if I need to buy them for myself.

(This rant brought to you as

cashew looks for new fountain pen models to decide if it's worth shelling out $$$ for a more customized writing experience, but mostly because eye candy is nice. Personally, I'm still looking for the perfect fountain pen that suits my specific set of needs; needs that are currently being fulfilled by multiple pens and rotated depending on what experience I'm looking for. The perfect pen might not exist, but it doesn't stop me from looking. Also, did I mention eye candy?)