anyway outside of the digital realm, here is our steadily growing fountain pen collection, in no particular order.

from left to right:

• silver filigree pen with clear insides: Hongdian D1, inked with Diamine Writer's Blood, because it looks great with the demonstrator (clear insides so you can see the ink). used for writing curses and condemnations and also just whenever we want to write in blood
• black pen with silver swoops: Picasso 901 (Amorous Feeling of Paris), inked with Pilot Iroshizuku Murasaki-shikibu. to be used when conjuring fantasy and deception alike - or, y'know, ourple.
• black pen with gold-patterned cap: Picasso 902 Gentleman, inked with Diamine Candle Light. an ink for comfort, nostalgia, and agonizing homesickness for a place that doesn't exist. also a very pretty yellow
• black pen with silver trim and subtle blue-green marks: Picasso 903 Sweden Green Flower King, inked with Pilot Iroshizuku Chiku-rin. plants c:
• black cigar-shaped pen with silver clip: Pilot Metropolitan, inked with... the standard black Pilot ink. first pen! still a lovely writer
• black plastic modern-looking pen: Lamy Safari with a 1.1 stub nib, inked with Diamine Polar Glow. writes what shouldn't be forgotten, for better or worse. it's also just Prettie.
• gray dragon-embossed pen with gold trim: Jinhao 5000 Gray Dragon with a fude nib, inked with Pilot Iroshizuku Kiri-same. used to draw a variety of things! including ghosts.

I definitely have a fondness for Chinese pens - all of the ones we have wrote beautifully out of the box and look nice without breaking the bank. (most of the Expensive Luxury Pens I see on this side of the ocean are kinda mid tbh.) I haven't been able to verify this beyond going "yeah that tracks from what my relatives do" but apparently a big reason Chinese pens are much cheaper is that fountain pens are simply considered an everyday writing tool there, rather than the Luxury Goods they are in the US, and the government subsidizes their production. so it's not uncommon to be able to pick up a nice pen for like the equivalent of 6 USD, with pens in the 20ish USD area being considered mid-range. (meanwhile, I've seen "mid-range" in the US refer to 200 USD pens. baffling)