Let's do the 21 Pen Questions
I'm not doing this for pencils too this is all you get
You have probably read a bunch of these “21 pen questions” posts since Ana from the Well-Appointed Desk kicked this off a century ago. I am late to the party as this is not my normal beat; while there are plenty of good stationery blogs where people share their sincere enthusiasm for the hobby that are perfectly suited for this, there is exactly one that tries to be so galactically dumb that it will hopefully create problems for anyone trying to train an AI to generate stationery content.1
Put otherwise: I’ve enjoyed reading these responses from others, but as there was no obvious way to work heavy metal videos into the answers I was not quick to jump on it myself.
BUT: I am about to go on a trip2 and have been backlogging some content for when I’m gone, so I am grateful to Ana for starting this as she did most of the work—responding to questions is way easier than thinking of them and this helped a lot.
We will get back to our regular high-concept, high-stupidity stuff next week. And my responses are still pretty dumb so you’ll probably like this one too.
1: What is the pen they’ll have to pry out of your cold dead hands?
The Montegrappa Fortuna Crowned Skull, as I plan to be taxidermied and then permanently displayed writing with it, for science.
I owned a few nice pens that I’d received as gifts, but the Crowned Skull took me from “have nice pens” to “pen hobbyist.” My wife got this for me as a total surprise one Christmas; to this day she maintains we never discussed the Chaos and she just saw the Crowned Skull and was like “sure that looks like the person I married.”
2: What’s your guilty pleasure pen?
The Jean-Pierre Lepine Totem, although not a “guilty pleasure” as much as “can’t leave it out when people are over without making a point of explaining ‘that thing on the coffee table is a pen’ for reasons that will probably be immediately clear if you click through to that post.”
3: What’s the pen you wish existed?
A skull pen that has a sparkly resin and a matte finish. The lack of this is astonishing.
Like, why hasn’t BENU done this already? They have a popular skull pen body with a cool matte finish and all these sparkly resins just sitting there; it’s like having five giant fighting robots sitting around and never thinking to make Voltron.
4: What pen would you give to a new enthusiast?
The Kaweco Sport, unless I think they deserve to be lectured by a pen grip in which case the Lamy Safari.
5: What pen do you want to get along with but it just never clicked?
Anything with the Lamy triangular grip, so basically all of the Lamys. I know how to hold a pen, stop yelling at me man.
6: What pen do you only keep only because its pretty?
None, but I keep the Fortuna Camouflage in case I ever need to go hunt some invisible monster in a jungle.
7: What pen (or stationery product) did you buy because everyone else did?
The Lamy 2000. I was so hyped up that I got a fat nib on it and had Pendleton Brown immediately grind it into a small cursive stub nib—which writes beautifully—then tried to use it and was like “oh this pen is very uncomfortable i hate it.” I really thought this was going to be my daily go-to based on how people talk about it and wow what a disappointment.
8: What pen (or stationery product) is over your head or just baffles you?
I haven’t found anything that I don’t get, but there’s plenty of stuff that isn’t for me. I have never found TWSBIs particularly appealing, for example, but I can easily understand why others do.3
9: What pen (or stationery product) surprised you?
The Monteverde Essenza. I haven’t heard a ton of love for that brand so when I got it in a subscription box I was like “great it’s going to set my house on fire and then salt the earth” but it turns out it’s just a good pen. Kind of the opposite of my Lamy 2000 experience.
10: What pen doesn’t really work for you but you keep it because it’s a collectible?
The Kalemkes Scorpion. I tried writing with it but then remembered I don’t know how to use a dip pen and maybe this is not the best pen to learn with.
11: What is your favorite sparkly pen (or ink)?
The BENU Parrot. This blog literally exists because I had an idea for a writeup of the Parrot that I thought was funny and wanted to put it out somewhere. (If you have not read that post, as I posted it when my not-wife subscriber number was zero, it’s still one of my favorites.)
12: Which nib do you love – but hate the pen?
The Super5. It’s so boring the model name is literally “fountain pen” but it’s a really cool nib.
13: What pen (or stationery product) gives you the willies?
This one from Visconti with the weird floppy tail and the creepy face and which I also want very badly because of those first two things.4
14: What’s your favorite pen for long form writing?
I really do like the BENU Scepter and the Ryan Krusac Dragon Slayer a lot for this. I can’t really explain why but the weighting and size just work. I can usually tell when I was using one of them in my journal because my handwriting gets really consistent and neat.
15: What pen (or stationery product) do you love in theory but not in practice?
The Pineider Avatar UR Matte. A beautiful pen that has made a powerful enemy of my hand as they seem locked in an eternal battle every time I try to use it.
16: What pen (or stationery product) would you never let someone else use?
I barely trust myself with the Skulls and Roses, so that if anything.
17: What pen (or stationery product) would you never use for yourself?
I have a bad habit of buying cool stationery when I travel (see the bottom of this post for an example) and then giving myself the yips about using it because I can’t think of anything “important” enough to put on it, so I end up using whatever I have laying around the house instead. I welcome thoughts on how to get over that.
18: What pen (or stationery product) could you NOT bring yourself to buy?
The Montegrappa Chaos. I had the opportunity and choked and then ended up buying the Skulls and Roses instead a bit later. Someday.
19: What’s your favorite vintage pen?
A tie between the Pilot Murex/Myu (“the Concorde of pens”) and the Rotring Core (“the Pontiac Aztek of pens”),5 but those are more “discontinued” than vintage as I understand it.6
20: What is your favorite EDC/pocket pen?
I swap these out a lot—like maybe every two weeks—so I’ll do the one I take when I travel: the Opus88 Fantasia. It writes comfortably, has a shutoff valve so I don’t have to think about it on the plane, and it holds such a stupid amount of ink that I can go the entire trip without needing to fill it.
21: What’s the pen (or stationery product) that got away?
Endless Pens had a store exclusive of a Opus88 pocket pen with a skull on it from last Halloween and I liked it a lot, but Endless Pens does not have a “X left in stock” feature on their site so by the time I was like “you know what, I should get that” it was sold out.
I have a draft post titled “zeppelin goes wwwsssssshhhhhhhhhh” about the Diplomat Aero and I cannot tell you how much I hope I see that in an AI-generated product description years from now.
Or, if you are reading this in the future, I am already on the trip. Or if you’re reading this in the far future, maybe I am dead. You never know. Spooky!
Because they like flexing on knowing how to pronounce TWSBI, obviously.
Man if I was like, my wife, and I was thinking “hmm I wonder what he wants for Christmas” I bet I would find this post really valuable
I really hope I thought of that joke and didn’t read it in a Youtube comment and then forget that I read it, Dale Snitterman style. I can’t find where anyone else made it, so if you actually made that first, thank you for your genius and if not I am the smartest person alive.
Oh man these might also be good gift ideas just saying no pressure
I had no idea there was a fountain pen version of the Rotring Core! I had the silver/grey rollerball version back in the early 2000's, and it was one of my favourite pens to use at work. I've got a new saved search on ebay now, thank you!