Does Not Obey the Laws of Physics

After scribbling over 50k words by hand with my beloved Kaküno, I'm back in the saddle to push fountain pens like some terrible street dealer. I'm also really annoyed with the constant push by stationary influencers (they are a thing) towards the likes of Pilot Metropolitan, Platinum Preppy or the Sailor Compass. Which are all perfectly fine pens, sure, but I feel like there are definitely better starter pens out there that deserve more attention. And so, I'm here to fix the gap.

Kaküno is the GOAT of pens

Pilot steel nibs are some of the best nibs in the industry. Period. And that makes Pilot fountain pens are some of the best starter pens. But the Kaküno takes the cake for various reasons.

One, the nibs are very smooth. Most fountain pen first timers prefer an experience that's closer to a rollerball/gel pen. This nib achieves that while still writing under minimal pressure.

Two, the pen accepts the CON-70 converter, which means being able to carry up to 1.1mL of ink in the pen at a time, making it great for anyone who's a prolific writer. For those that want to switch ink more frequently, there's also the CON-40, which carries 0.4mL of ink.

Three, the Pilot cartridge has a wonderfully large mouth, which means you can refill it with an eye dropper easily instead of investing in an ink syringe. I like the precision of the syringe, but some people don't like having needles around the house. The flute in the Pilot cartridge also means that every last drop of ink will get into the feed as you write without worrying about surface tension.

Four, the Kaküno, in 2022, has so, so many colorways that you can definitely find something that fits whatever your taste. Previously, the Kaküno got flak for being too "childish" with its colors. But with the all slate grey colorway, the pen easily fits into any more "serious" or "adult" setting. Y'know, for those of you who hate fun.

Five, the pen has a very long grip, a snap cap, and weighs basically nothing. It more or less disappears in your hand. You can hold the pen however you want. You can quickly slip the cap on and off for quick notes. It holds enough ink for extended writing sessions. It offers three different line widths (EF, F, M) to fit whatever size you write at. You can swap out the nib with those on the Pilot Parallel for fancy calligraphy writing. What I'm getting at is that you can have a lot of fun with this pen.

Six, it costs $12. Yes, it's a little more if you throw in a converter, but that still comes out to around $19. It's one of the cheapest fountain pen options available and it will last a long, long time. As long as you're not stress testing the pen, it'll hold up under regular use for decades. I won't say a lifetime, because it is still just a $12 pen, but it'll last long enough to justify its $12 existence.

Seven, you can always wrap the barrels in washi tape to give it some extra oomph and customization. Or get it customized with some cool figurines embedded into the barrel.

The only thing that I'll give you is that the Kaküno tends to dry out a little faster than the other pens for some reason. I don't understand why, since it has an inner cap and everything, but I've noticed that ink has a tendency to dry out when I leave the pen alone for a week. Anything under a week, however, is fine.

So, if you are like me and write by hand a lot, consider trading in that rollerball for a fountain pen.

And if I still can't get you to consider using fountain pens for your writing, then how about a refillable rollerball that uses fountain pen ink?

Because the best reason to use a fountain pen is the absolutely batshit nuts amount of ink colors available to use for everyday writing. Just imagine filling a form that requires boring blue or black, and you pull out a subtle Iroshizuku Shin Kai to spice things up.

I can attest that being able to use all sorts of colors when drafting is one of the few things pushing me through the most difficult parts of NaNoWriMo.

First, I will give you that the ballpoint offered some very useful traits: dry-out resistant ink, ability to write upside-down, water-resistant ink. The fact that these traits exist means that other pens had to up their game to be able to compete, sure, but...

1. Pencil already does everything the ballpoint can do. The only difference is that pencil can be erased and the ballpoint cannot. So the only time to choose ballpoint over pencil is in the special case where one needs the writing to be permanent and...

2. DOCUMENT INK is permanent ink. It will bind to the plant fibers in the paper and won't fade with time. And what specific conditions will you need to use permanent ink? A few off the top of my head:

   • Signing legal documents - which I doubt you'd be doing in the rain and sleet and snow. Most likely, you'll be in a house or at least inside an enclosure, away from the elements, at a desk and thus a fountain pen will serve your purposes just fine.

   • Archival manuscripts - Will most likely not be copying these things by hand, and if you do, most will go to a calligrapher who will be using dip pens anyway, so no ballpoints here.

   • Ticketing? OK, maybe this is a good place to use ballpoints. Now how many of you are police officers?

   • Banking - again, banks used to have fountain pens attached to their desks with little pots of ink that gets refilled at night. I'm sure it costs the institution less money to attach a 50-cent Bic to the tables instead, but in terms of customer convenience it's pretty much the same.

   • Test taking - and yet, we happily accept pencil on math tests, scantrons, etc. Why must we use ink? I'm genuinely confused, because it's not like the students are going to break into our offices and steal their tests and change the answers. I guess you can argue that it prevents the teachers from changing the student's answers...but, again, we already accept math tests to be completed in pencil, so there's honestly no excuse for not accepting pencil on a test.

3. The claim that ballpoints don't leak is a lie. I don't know what kind of amazing ballpoints BBC are using, but my ballpoints have definitely leaked and gotten oily messes all over my papers. The rolling mechanisms also sometimes stop working completely because the manufacturing margin of error is so small for the ball mechanism to successfully roll the oil paste, so I've had to ditch entire pens even though I've only used up about half of the ink.

4. The mass adoption of ballpoints is directly correlated to the decrease in penmanship. You might argue that we don't need penmanship anymore in the digital age, but penmanship isn't just about "looking good". Writing is such an inherent, physical aspect of our learning that the practice of handwriting and paying attention to penmanship helps the student to improve all aspects of their education, including the practice of paying attention, patience, and thinking over their words twice before committing things to paper. And when the writer can look at a page of pretty words they've written, it gives them a nice dopamine shot of happiness compared to seeing a page of chicken scratch. If we want to encourage more handwriting, we should definitely switch to tools that will help improve penmanship.

   • Caveat: No, switching to a fountain pen will not magically make your handwriting better unless you've already practice your penmanship. However, for anyone who have practice penmanship, it's noticeably easier to write better when using a fountain pen compared to using a ballpoint. The rolling mechanism in ballpoints gets in the way of more precise fine motor control.

To conclude, while I'm glad that the ballpoint has forced fountain pens to become less leaky, more resilient, and generally cheaper for students, I can't say that writing has been changed by the wide adoption of ballpoints at the industrial level. At least not in a good way. Our writing is uglier and our plastic waste has gone through the roof. I don't think the ballpoint was a net positive. I just can't in good conscience praise the ballpoint.

This rant brought to you by recently seeing a post encouraging beginner fountain pen enthusiasts to start off with $100 pens (WTF!?) and too many articles justifying expensive pens.

As a fountain pen enthusiast who uses fountain pens on an industrial level (drafted three >100K-word stories by hand with pens so far), and as a person who personally believes that fountain pens are a tool first and foremost, and should be judged most heavily on how well it writes rather than its "artistry" (whatever that means), I'm agog at the thought of anyone thinking recommending $100 pens to new users is a good idea. I'm also getting tired of the fountain pen hobbyist trying to justify their exorbitant spending by insisting the pen has "value" beyond the $30 mark to convince others into joining them in their excess.

Look, if you want to spend money because buying stuff makes you feel good, then spend the money. Don't try to trick yourself into thinking you're somehow getting a good bargain.

Anyway, since I'm feeling pretty bitchy right now, I'm going to tear into the argument for starting someone on $100 fountain pens and point out why that's both irresponsible and AMORAL.

[...] a Parker 51 or Pilot Custom Heritage 92, and to a lesser extent a LAMY 2000 or Pilot Custom Heritage 91, delivers such an outstanding experience that a new fountain pen user will have much less reason to "dream bigger" [...]

As an experienced user of fountain pens, I can say with 100% confidence that the more expensive pens like the Parker 51, Custom Heritage 91/92, or Lamy 2k do not deliver a writing experience that's 10-times as good as the Pilot Kakuno. Do they write slightly better? Yes.

Does it scale linearly with the cost? NO.

What's more, I also know that I don't appreciate the gold nib. In other words, I actively dislike how gold nibs write. The soft "bounce" that's so sought after by fountain pen hobbyists is annoying as fuck to deal with when I'm drafting 50k words for NaNo. I'd much rather have an industrial steel nib that keeps the line variation to a minimum when I'm trying to write fast, not pretty. I actively hate piston fillers because the added weight of the ink along the barrel throws the balance off for me because my hands are puny and sensitive to those micro shifts. The pen feels "off" and I have to keep readjusting my grip with most piston fillers on the market. The only piston fillers that haven't given me problems are pocket-sized piston fillers, probably because the ink capacity is a) lower and b) closer to the nib, so it doesn't throw the pen balance off.

With experience, I also know that I hate posting (putting the cap on the butt-end when writing) and thus it's important that a pen can be used without posting. If the pen must post, as happens with pocket pens, then the cap must not add weight to the end of the pen and for me, anything over 2g I can feel and throws the balance off.

As such, for me, even after having tried $100+ fountain pens, my perfect pen continues to be the Kakuno. For me, the air-tightness is less of an issue due to the fact that I write daily. Parker 51's hooded nib offers me nothing because I don't leave my pens unused for extended periods of time. And I hate aerometic fillers because it makes changing inks a PITA. I know this about myself and so I will never be tempted to buy a pen that cannot be easily and quickly dismantled for fast cleaning, which means most higher end pens, and especially piston filler pens, are simply not going to fulfill my needs and thus I will not be happy using them.

Which means if I had followed this person's advice to get a Parker 51, Pilot CH91/92, or Lamy 2k, I would've been extremely unsatisfied and would need to keep buying more pens until I found what I needed in the Kakuno. In the process, I would have been misled to spend hundreds of dollars when I could've found my perfect pen with $12.

(Do I still love my $100+ Franklin-Christoph? Yes. But that pen was ordered after I got to know my preferences and how I like my pens to write so when I plopped down the money, I already knew it was going to be perfect for my quirks.)

[...] a user of the entry level pens, though those pens also give a great experience, they let a newbie dream of greener pastures. The siren call of a better pen leads to the downwards spiral of fountain pen acquisition disorder [...]

FACTUALLY WRONG. As I mentioned earlier, after trying all kinds of pens, it turns out that my favorite pen is the Kakuno. (I can't bring myself to take the Franklin-Christoph out of the house for fear of losing it, so I don't write with it as much as the Kakuno.) The entry level Kakuno writes exactly as I want and is cheap enough that I don't have anxiety carrying it with me. It is the GOAT as far as I am concerned.

And that's the rub. Because the fountain pen is an extremely personal experience. Each person's preference is unique. Sure, plenty of these $100 will satisfy maybe 80% of what a person wants out of a pen, but that's not what you're coming into fountain pens for. You're in this circle because you're looking for the perfect pen for you, not the pretty good pen for everyone. Because, let's be real, a high end liquid ink rollerball already fulfills that niche.

Furthermore, I never felt the "siren call" of a better experience. I'm perfectly happy looking at other people's $300-$1000 pens without getting it for myself, because I know that the features of those pens don't fit what I want. And I know that because I've tried those features on cheaper pens and wrote them off as "not for me".

Someone who is new to fountain pens wouldn't know their own quirks. Do they want Japanese nibs or German nibs? Do they want heavy or light pens? Do they actually like the piston filler or will it annoy them? Would they rather have a converter they can pull off and throw in a cup to soak when changing ink colors? How far up do they grip their pen? Will cap threads bother their fingers when they write? Are they someone who likes checking on ink levels periodically? Do they even like bouncy nibs or would they prefer a steadier stiff nib?

None of these questions can be answered by anyone other than the person themselves. So the idea that any pen can offer "superior" writing experience carte blanche is a lie. A Lamy 2K will not satisfy someone who needs a Japanese XF nib width (Lamy 2K's XF is twice as thick). A Parker 51 will not satisfy someone who wants to be able to see their ink levels or want to have a lot of line variation. Pilot CH92 won't satisfy someone who wants quick ink changes and easy cleaning. Pilot CH91 does nothing for the person who hates Pilot's CON-70 converter (which is not an insubstantial amount of people).

I'm not saying you need to try out 50 different pens before you figure out what kind of pen you like, usually 2-3 is enough if those pens covers a wide swath of variables. And when you write with the pens long enough, you'll know which features are non-negotiable and which ones you prefer but don't actually need. And only then can you figure out which pen is perfect for you.

To start someone off on a $100+ Lamy 2K when that person prefers a thinner line is not just irresponsible, it's AMORAL. You're effectively scamming the person into buying a pen they don't want by selling it as a pen that is "perfect" when there is no such thing. And someone who has no experience with fountain pens would not know what they want until they've tried out more options and got to know their own writing habits. And to package this argument as being more fiscally responsible is just an extra stinky pile of shit on top of this dung heap of an argument.

Then, to use the "worth it" argument... The only person who can determine whether the item is "worth" it is the person who is paying for it. Until the person writes with the pen, they cannot know if it was "worth" it. Random people on the internet swearing up and down the "feel" is great or the construction is superb is not a measure of worth and cannot measure worth. You can do math and show that quantitatively you're spending less dollars, but that's all you can show. "Worth" is literally something that is subjective and cannot be quantified. So the fountain pen community need to stop trying to up sell an expensive plastic rod with a nib attached and just let the newbie decide for themselves.

Give information, give market value, all of that is very useful. But to write entire arguments in an attempt to convince readers into spending hundreds of dollars on non-essential items just comes off as a sleezy and pushy salesperson. Staaaaaahp. ヾ(≧へ≦)〃

So, finally, the copyright/IP bullshit attitude in the fountain pen community is finally getting called out.

By a patent lawyer.

OMG. Finally.

Finally.

And this only because there were two utterly ridiculous blowups because major pen manufacturers tried to bully smaller pen companies by:

1. In Kaweco's case, abuse trademark laws and Majohn née Moonman didn't bother to fight it, even though they might have been able to overturn it by pointing to blatant trademark trolling (a practice where companies register a trademark without producing anything under said trademark solely for the sake of suing another company).

2. In TWSBI's case, straight up violate some anti-trust laws by trying to corner and monopolize the market.

I suspect these two companies figured they'll have enough support from the loud, obnoxious "but mah copyright" people to support their bullshit, but it seems like the community as a whole has finally listened to the patent lawyer that these companies are not above board and are not behaving ethically.

Which is not to say there isn't a substantial minority that are desperately trying to argue against a patent lawyer's reading on this situation while not knowing how patent laws work. So...yeah, the stupid continues.

I'm just happy this hobby sphere is finally getting bitch slapped with how little they understand IP/copyright/trademark/patent laws and how they've been conflating concepts and need to STFU.

Finally, there are fountain pen people who recognize the purpose of a pen is to write and carry it around with you. Of course, like everyone else, I enjoy a pretty pen, but the writing experience is absolutely a must. And the Kaküno is cute enough that I enjoy its aesthetic, too.

Moar Kakünos!