Review: super elite tactical fountain pen

that legacy of art and competitive kicking

EXCITING NEWS: it’s time for a new entry in this blog’s ongoing effort to become the world’s top/only resource for tactical fountain pens. We’ve previously covered the Montegrappa Camouflage and this one that you could use as a baton; today we are covering one that is specifically made for the most elite of fighting forces, the Visconti Special Ops.

The Special Ops is built on Visconti’s Rembrandt line, which is fitting given the Dutch master’s demonstrated interest in hand-to-hand combat. Although you will not find this fact on Wikipedia, true Rembrandt fans know that the real reason he did not make any dated works in 1649 had nothing to do with his complicated love life and everything to do with his single-minded focus on becoming the top fighter in his dojo.

The Special Ops honors that legacy of art and competitive kicking by being both green and black, a revolutionary use of two colors in the same pen. These carefully chosen colors remind the user of Rembrandt’s drab olive period and the black belt he finally earned and then famously wore every day for the last decade of his life (though, it should be noted, only when in the privacy of his own dwellings, which is the reason why you cannot fact-check this claim).

The Special Ops is a cartridge/converter pen with a black steel nib—the exact same material used to make guns, knives, and tactical dishwashers (for military-grade rinses). The nib is a 5.5ish in size and is stamped with some Visconti stuff that is hard to photograph but which is definitely there. It writes an extremely wet and wide line that ensures you will not experience skipping in tactical note-taking situations.

The cap attaches with magnets for quick deployment and putting-awayment. This is a tremendous asset for when you are pinned down under enemy fire, being mugged in a dark alleyway, or need a reason to bring up that one ICP song about magnets in tactical conversations.

The finial is magnetized as well. This allows you to change the look of the pen by removing the stock “V” finial and replacing it with a jewel or something else that expresses your personality—for example, a rainbow-colored narwhal from the Visconti x Lisa Frank collab.

This is not just an aesthetic upgrade, however: If you find yourself in a situation where you need to use enhanced interrogation techniques on an enemy combatant, simply giving them this pen with the “V” finial slightly misaligned and instructing them that they can go free if they can fix it will mentally ruin them as they spend fruitless hours trying to get it to seat correctly.

The Special Ops uses Visconti’s “bridge” clip. This shape of this clip evokes the Ponte Vecchio from Visconti’s hometown of Florence, the tactically-fortified bridge that is, to this very day, the sole reason Italy is not overrun by ninjas.

This pen came out in 2016ish. Should you try to track one down for yourself? Obviously; you never know when you’re going to be surrounded by highwaymen or bandits and therefore everything you own should be a tactical version of that object just in case.

But what if you are on a budget?

Well, in the unfortunate and rare circumstance where you only have budget for one military-themed Italian fountain pen and have to choose between the Visconti Special Ops and the Montegrappa Camouflage, here is the question to ask: how much of your tactical writing takes place in a forest? The Special Ops is the right pen for tactical note-taking in a non-forested situation—for example, a quarterly sales meeting. For forested situations—for example, a quarterly sales meeting in a forest—you will want the Montegrappa Camouflage.

OTHER STUFF

I MADE A MUG: It’s perfect for making your coworkers uncomfortable on pizza Fridays.

Besides the joy of writing, one of the drivers for continuing to write Great Leader Detective Agency is how much I enjoy making goofy, in-universe merchandise. This mug is from chapter 30 and I love it so much.

A reminder that Book 1 is officially out in August. As the cover states, it is the most novel. You can still get an early copy for free by clicking here, but time is running low.

QUICK, ONE-QUESTION SURVEY: Hey, do you listen to audiobooks?

Context for the survey: My wife bought me Dungeon Crawler Carl a couple weeks ago and I’ve torn through the first five books in the series since then. (Which, as some of these books push 700 pages, is a lot, and I am kind of mad that adults do not get pizza parties for reading.)

Dungeon Crawler Carl is very successful and much of that success apparently originated from the release of the audio version. I don’t listen to audiobooks, and I’m curious if that is because of habits (I don’t commute) or just a preference for reading. I figure people who read a stationery joke blog are going to skew heavily to a preference for reading as well, so I want to see what you guys think.