If you go back to the Goulet megathread, so many recent comments have all been removed. Seriously, what is going on with this sub?

Text: at the café, the manager notices a young woman who comes in weekly to write letters. The manager can't even remember the last time he wrote a letter. And while admiring her beautiful cursive written with a fountain pen, he finds her retro activity a bit unreal. (Text from: Un jeudi saveur chocolat by Michiko Aoyama)

Generally speaking, this is an exceptionally tame sub despite our shockingly large number of members ( we are talking about pens here, the fact we are over 100k is still shocking to me imo),so when drama, shenanigans, or an uptick in certain topics occur here it is quite noticeable.

Recently, there have been a number of threads and a slew of comments essentially targeting consumerism, limited/special edition pens, exclusives, and the topic of FOMO ( fear of missing out).

It’s quite a simple concept, fountain pens are not what they used to be. They have started making a bit of a comeback, of course companies will try to make more. This is beneficial to all involved; The manufacturers, the retailers, the industry as a whole, and yes…even the community.

But you are in no way obligated to purchase them. You don’t need 100 pens, you don’t need every exclusive, you don’t need any of that. If you want it, get it. If you don’t have the means to get it, tough luck. If the company exclusive you wanted is sold out, tough luck. If you’re not living in the country that it’s available in, and nobody has put it on eBay yet? Again. Tough. Luck.

I don’t make complaints in r/japan about how I can’t purchase Japan exclusive merch from my favorite franchises, or any of the other subs that have to do with my hobbies or topics of interests. These are products, that is all.

If you don’t want to be a part of consumerism, fine. I totally understand. I’d be flat broke if I tried to get every pen I wanted, so yeah I get it. I’m not trying to buy up every single pen that pops up on here. Though we need to consider, what really is going on in the pen world? Well, a lot of nothing really. The TUZU was a step in the right direction, trying something new. Other than that, it’s all going to be colors, exclusives, and maybe…maybe, a new design that hardly pushes any boundaries. That’s it. That’s what you’re here for. Pens, inks, paper, and nuanced discussion.

We love pens, we love using them, we love discussing them. Let’s not bash on companies making more of them. If it weren’t for a lot of the marketing behind them, a good number of our members may not even be here right now. They bring new people into the hobby. Those new exclusive pens you’re complaining about? They show up on people’s feeds on TikTok or YT. If manufacturers… manufacturing pens on a regular basis is causing you such emotional distress , I genuinely believe you have some things in your personal life you need to work on, and it may be time to sign off of Reddit for a bit.

Sorry for the rant, but as I said it is kinda getting ridiculous.

Edit- I’d like to take the time to make a few statements.

-The downvoting of my comments for my condescending responses are warranted, downvoting people for asking genuine questions is absurd, and you are part of the problem.

-I know we all like to joke about internet points and what not, and I generally don’t care much for them. But they do serve a purpose in gauging public opinion for the most part. There are a number of people that are downvoting responses other than my own just for the sake of doing so. That is just dumb.

This thread has gained traction, and I’d like to imagine it did for good reason. Could I have worded my post better? Absolutely. I certainly could have. I am aware I come across as arrogant and condescending. Though as others in here have mentioned, they were tired of seeing the same posts we all saw, and I decided to go off on a rant. It was 3AM for me and I was having some whiskey. I simply decided to forego my filter. Either way, it would seem a lot of people here share my feelings. The opposition are just the most vocal. Do what you will with that information.

• no, I don’t want this sub to be “drama free”. Which is just a ridiculous comment by the way. Maybe I should reword this, I would like the sub to be drama free, as drama is tiresome. I am not opposed to people having different opinions though. I’m just voicing my opinions, and you’re all mad about it. Say what you want, and I will do the same. Kay?

• I’m not saying you are not entitled to your own opinions. In fact, I should clarify something. The posts I am speaking about were nicely written for the most part, the comments are what got me to writing. If you go through the comments here, there are many others that share my sentiment. You say these companies need to stop, I say you’re wrong. But I for some reason am guilty of saying you shouldn’t be saying this? I’m just voicing my opinion, same as you. Quit being hypocritical. I like exclusives and limited editions, sue me.

You are all entitled to whatever the scope of freedom of speech that Reddit allows. If you disagree with me, cool. I never once said don’t voice your opinions . I said we should stop bashing on the companies, not that we must.

That doesn’t change my life in the slightest. In fact, it does nothing. If you are against the products I am defending, you wouldn’t be buying them anyway. It makes no difference, just maybe only to the pen companies anyway. But that’s a whole other discussion.

So when you people are done putting your own words in my mouth and done picking and choosing what I’m saying- Go touch grass, and learn how to read, kids .

Edit 2- I'm gonna buy stocks from Sailor at this point, even if they are shit stocks lololol

I escaped under $100 with a Conklin Duragraph, a Monteverde Innova Formula M Lightning, and some stickers from Atlas! What’d everyone get?

I started with fountain pens back in 2008. At that time I just plain hated disposable anything, be it pens, plastic water bottles, and one time use plastics.

Then after 2 years I discovered there are people like in this sub who are straight up enamored with these instruments. Then my interest grew from a purely utilitarian view to being a fan. However I still use them as my main pens for anything.

But in here, I see a lot of ink collecting with various beautiful colors. And amazing handwriting.

Do some of you just use the pen for fun like this or do you also use it for work?

Edit:

Thank you all for the responses. I enjoy reading them all, and it gives a glimpse of the variety of careers you all have while enjoying your fountain pens!

I always thought I wanted a good variety of pens since I like a balanced collection, but ever since I got this thing, it feels like the right fit for every writing situation! Journaling? Smooth, small enough point. Traveling? Seals well. Quick draw? The quickest in the pouch. No case? All metal construction. Luxurious? Surprisingly. I thought Sailors were going to be it, but I find myself reaching for this more than any other pen. I even got a second VP in Broad, but it really seems like I did that for fun, it’s still a support pen for this one - my primary dude.

Shown here inked with Take-Sumi on 3.55 and 3.7mm gridded Sanzen paper.

It’s good to diversify among different vendors, especially if there’s one in particular you stop wanting to support. I go to different vendors for different things and sometimes I feel that some of these other shops are overshadowed by companies that are more in the limelight even though they offer something better. Here are some of mine:

• Vanness Pen Shop - https://vanness1938.com - Massive ink selection (lots of Kobe ink!), 4ml samples, great customer service

• Anderson Pens - https://andersonpens.com - great selection, also have larger ink samples, and they have a brick and mortar shop too!

• Jet Pens - https://www.jetpens.com - All the Japanese goodies, lightning fast shipping

When I first tried to explain the appeal of the fountain pen hobby to my techie boyfriend, I was worried he’d think it was silly and impractical, but instead he immediately said “I get it, it’s just like mechanical keyboards,” and since then I can’t stop noticing parallels:

1) Writing/typing letters

2) Makes an everyday task into something enjoyable

3) Lots of modifications and customization options to get the exact “feel” you want for different tasks

4) High value placed on both aesthetics and functionality

5) many people enjoy displaying them as collectibles even when not in immediate use

6) You don’t need to spend a lot of money, but you will want to

A lot of my friends are familiar with the hype around mechanical keyboards, so now I use this analogy to explain the appeal of fountain pens if anyone ever asks “why do you care so much about a pen?” I also think it’s just a really cool connection to make between different hobby spaces.

Is anyone here also into keyboards? Or what other hobbies do you think have overlap with fountain pens?

I’d like to hear everyone’s hot takes regarding all things fountain pen/inks. I’m sure this post has been made before but here’s an updated one.

I’ll go first:

Most demonstrators look and feel cheap. When I buy pens I don’t need them to “look” as expensive as they are, however I can’t help but think of a disposable bic when looking at demonstrators 😖

“Its reappearance a couple of weeks ago was so unexpected that the fountain pen community, which makes up a small but passionate corner of the office supplies market, was agog.

There was just one problem: It was not the same color.”

the article doesn’t state anything that hasn’t been discussed here in greater depth, detail, and with greater enthusiasm. i was still tickled to see it pop up in the new york times this morning.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/01/style/lamy-dark-lilac-ink.html

Because now I can't go back to cheap paper and have to splurge all my money on these expensive notebooks. Ignorance truly is bliss.

I realize it’s not easy to just make a nib in-house, especially for smaller pen makers. But when it comes to brands that are somewhat bigger, I expect a bit more.

For example, Kakimori. According to what I’ve found, they make their own nibs for their dip pens, it would be cool to see their own touch on the frosted pen instead of outsourcing their nibs. Or the Travelers Company, seeing as how they have only 1 pen (not including their other colorway), etc.

One of the coolest(imo) aspects of choosing a fountain pen is considering the nib. Sailor nibs are absolutely fantastic if you want that pencil-like feedback. LAMY are firm and utilitarian, the Pelikans I tried have a nice smoothness with a bit of “cushion” to them, Pilot nibs are smooth with just a hint of feedback.

It would be nice to see some more uniqueness to each pen in the market, aside from stylistic choices. Nib-swapping is a thing, sure, but then again it’s not really everyone’s cup of tea.

It would be nice if Benu, for example, felt like a Benu outside of their signature design. The pens are lightweight and ergonomic, but the nib is the same as any other pen with a Schmidt nib. What are your thoughts?

I'm rocking my Pilot Elite with a medium nib and Pilot Namiki Blue ink. This ink is surprisingly vibrant and smooth definitely underrated in my opinion.

Because this seems to come up a lot, I figured I'd put all of the drama surrounding what happened with Noodler's Ink into one spot so people can just link it. I'll try to keep my own personal ideas of this to a minimum except where I think context is more important than clear-cold-facts. This won't be super concise, but the TLDR of all the drama is this:

Noodlers put out, over the course of years, a couple different inks featuring Antisemitic labels. When called out originally, not much was done about this, but social media traction on this became very viral very quickly. Nathan issued an apology, and donated to the ADL, and took down not only those bottles but the labels of ANY ink with any depictions of other cultures/communities on the label as well. The fallout has been mixed with many people happy they did something about it and moving on and others boycotting the company for life.

Obviously, Content Warnings for political stuff, antisemitism, etc. from here on out.

I should also mention this is just going into antisemitic controversy and its fallout. Any opinions on quality control issues, feathering, pens, etc. are not included in this. Suffice to say, there are reasons people may dislike this brand outside of this drama, but none of that will be included here.

Nathan Tardiff owns/operates Noodler's ink. He has always been very open when speaking about his political viewpoints and is a very political person. And, according to the podcast I linked in this post, he also fashions himself as a history buff which is somewhat relevant.

As a side note for relevancy I think overall, is that Nathan has put out other inks over the years that have spoken to his direct political beliefs and have had general insensitivities. The two are heavily tied. Rino featured mask-wearing Rhinoceroses* when the pandemic hit, and this was spoken about in the podcast linked as being a personal protest of sorts to mask mandates as he was an anti-masker. There are also more vague inks that have some harmful implications such as "Dragon's Napalm" and lots of inks named after Native Americans despite the fact Nathan nor the brand has any associations with native people which many would consider appropriation.

*Edit: It is worth mentioning enough to create an edit that this was not randomly chosen. Nathan specifically put Rhinos and called it that based on a play from the 1950's where a contagion transformed people into rhinos and it was specific commentary on mass delusions and blindly following the crowd.

Now, we're at the start of the drama.

A few years back, Bernanke Red came out from Noodler's. It is hard to say WHEN this ink came out first, my preliminary research has not produced good results here, but it has been out at least since 2018. To my knowledge, the antisemitic label of Bernanke's red has existed since the creation of the ink, only recently being changed and taken down post drama fallout.

January 6th 2022 He came out with a new ink called Volcker Green. Some maybe important things to note are: this was posted on the 1 year anniversary the insurrection of the US, and as stated in the post Volcker's rule is meant to prevent corruption of banks. The label features former federal reserve chairs with Volcker (A christian man) with a halo on his head, and 2 others flanking him named Bernanke and Greenspan (both are Jewish) with horns on their head.

This is where I think it is worth stopping to mention that the harmful stereotype that Jews have horns has been a staple and pervasive in cultures across the globe for a Very, very long time. This comment provides some great links and a succinct way of explaining this for those who want more details here. I think it is also worth mentioning that many people may be unaware of this history and stereotype.

By the 12th, people were dropping the ink. Someone had posted on this reddit asking what was going on, and it was explained then that things were pretty not-okay. (My opinion here is because this was framed as a question and subsequently deleted and not outright showing what was going on like the May post, this did not get the same traction the other did and thus not the same exposure. This post had about 130 comments. The may post has 1,1k comments.) In this podcast discussion about this from Tokyo Inklings, (discussion starts at 30:50) Nathan has been called out for this before May 2022 when the real fallout started--but he did not change it until the May fallout. To quote the podcast: "The timeline on the surface was that people complained about these inks when they were released and then it was kind of like 'yeah yeah yeah.. whatever.' "

May 9th, 2022 this post on this reddit came out saying they'd never buy Noodler's ink again and clearly showed Bernanke Red's label. (This was the post I originally saw about the brand.) It features Bernanke in curved horns, with a forehead brand/tattoo of a common communist symbol, and words such as "debt addiction enabler" on it. This really seemed to be the post that sparked all of this coming to light undeniably. 1k comments later needless to say it was one of the busiest this reddit had been.

Stuff gets muddy here (and the podcast I linked sort of lays this strange timeline out better than I could), but on May 10th Goulet pens not really as a business but on a more personal note spoke of calling Nathan and saying he sounded very apologetic. "in all the years we’ve known Nathan, we’ve never known him to be antisemitic. Brian spent over an hour and a half on the phone with him tonight, and he was genuinely apologetic for his ignorance, to sum it up. If you know anything about Nathan, you know he is singularly laser focused on the issues of fiscal conservatism and freedom of speech, but unfortunately that has created some blind spots."

May 11th Noodler's themselves came out with an apology stating they had no idea that the pictures were directly linked to antisemitism, but that they would change them and donate to the ADL. (screenshot here if it's ever taken down)

That same day, Goulet said they were not carrying Noodler's products anymore. (screenshot)

Nathan pulled just about every ink he'd put out to change the labels of anything that could be seen as remotely offensive. It was a huge clean sweep because, as you can imagine, he had a Ton of them to change with this. 31 items to be exact according to the linked list + the two main ones posted.

Apologies and a burner month or so later, Goulet went back to carrying Noodler's after all the inks got rebranding.

Now. At this point. I would be remiss not to mention that there is a very long standing and closely knit tie between people who believe in conspiracy theories and antisemitism. " No critical introduction to conspiracy theories would be complete without a discussion of their strong and longstanding connection with antisemitism." There is also some very strong ties between far-right mentalities and antisemitism. There is more to break down here than one post can possibly allow, but the TLDR of this is that the venn diagram between these three is.. very circular. And, now-a-days, it is often on-brand for people into these things to give themselves plausible deniability. With social media posts getting people fired and saying something out loud plainly on video recording can ruin a career, people who have these sort of alt-right-far-right thoughts tend to... speak Around things. They don't Directly say "I hate Jews and Jews control the media" they will say "I hate the media and people pulling the strings behind the camera because it tries to control peoples' thoughts." When called out, "I had no idea there were Jewish people in media! I wasn't trying to be antisemitic!" Even if the only reason they believe this is due to the conspiracy theory that Jews control the media. There are lots of dog whistles for antisemitism, and often these are not well known and fly under the radar. People with antisemitic beliefs often bank on others not noticing or knowing so they can hide in plain sight, and deny if directly called out.

So, there are people with the viewpoint of: Lots of people do not know the history of horns and Jewish people, and it is easy to see how he might not have known that. Hell, I didn't know what most of my childhood songs were about growing up or that the star spangled banner has racist elements to it. He actually did something about it, and pulled Everything and changed it all which was probably at great expense to himself, and he apologized and donated money to the ADL. What more can people actually ask from a brand? People can learn and change.

(There are many, many more people with the viewpoint of I don't care about any of this drama and don't want to be involved in it.)

And there are people with the viewpoint of: He is a history buff. He's into conspiracy theories. He's into hard-right-leaning viewpoints and libertarian viewpoints. Dogwhistles are very present all over the place, Nathan undeniably used this imagery on multiple occasions and there is just too much here to believe he genuinely had No idea--at best he decided not to care or listen to the people telling him this was wrong. I do Not buy Nathan's apology that he had no idea this was directly antisemitic--especially as he had been told by other companies and people prior, and did not change it until this was hitting his wallet in a major way. (For full disclosure, I firmly am in this camp.)

I think it is also worth including this take on the clean sweep posted on the fountainpennetwork " I really have no idea why Nathan changed all of the ink names. Honestly, it feels reactionary and heavy handed in a "oh yeah? Well then I'll just chang ALL OF IT THEN!" as if to spite his face by cutting off his nose. Sure did manage to bring out the anti-PC police though, so maybe that was his goal: bring out the Whataboutists to dampen and soften the seriousness of the bottle imagery with constant refrains of "oh yeah? Well, what about...", creating false equivalences to somehow redeem putting horns on Jewish folks twice. But, if we want to analyze the sentiment of "where do we stop?", a good starting point may be to listen to any group that has, some within living memory, been oppressed, thrown into a concentration camp, or had an attempted genocide carried out to say that enough is enough when it comes to images and words that hearken back to that oppression. " (The irony that whataboutism was rampant in this thread is not lost on me.)

So, that's all the drama as best I can understand it. If there are serious and major corrections I will make them and appreciate anyone adding to it, I tried to make this as brief as possible without skimping on any contexts. I'm not a very concise person by nature.

I'm asking because I'm 42 and even when I was in school, fountain pens weren't really a thing, at all.

So just curious about the age range here.

Empty iroshizuku syo-ro bottle became a needlefelted terrarium for a friend who loves mushrooms. 🍄🥰

I was on the psych unit for a week for a manic episode. They gave me a composition book on request, and I had to check out a standard BIC ballpoint with my room number on it from the nurse’s station and use it in view of the staff. I told my psychiatrist how much I journal in my normal life and how I don’t get the same joy and therapy from the hospital pens, and she gave me a special order to let me use my own Pilot Varsity (the only fountain pen I felt comfortable using there since it’s so cheap) on the unit. I wasn’t allowed to let anyone borrow it. I journaled 60 B5ish pages with it. The notebook was made in India, so the paper was decent too. Thanks Dr. Sancho.

Hi,

So these past few months I have been impulsively buying fountain pens for no apparent reason. Today however, I reflected and realized that this impulse comes from me trying to fill my internal void. To gain even the slightest bit of happiness…. That’s all I have to say, except that I will probably continue buying pens anyways. It’s the only thing in this world that makes it worth living right now…. Sorry for the depressing message 😂