know it's for the better

PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS APPRECIATION WEEK DAY SIX | favourite monster → Medusa

THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK 1997 | dir. Steven Spielberg

INTERSTELLAR   2014 | dir. Christopher Nolan

Fallout Season 1 | Episode 6 "The Trap"

Hello welcome my ADHD themed gameshow, "So you were holding it literally moments ago but now it's gone" the where YOU look for whatever you were just holding while going increasingly mad

I'm just trying to get the mood right

Reblog if you didn't notice the missing words

CHAPPELL ROAN | makeup by @donni.davy

Hozier via Instagram (25/08/2023)

FALLOUT (2024-)

JENNA ORTEGA

Madame Figaro Magazine | 2024

LAST NIGHT IN SOHO (2021) dir. Edgar Wright

BRANDON LEE as ERIC DRAVEN

THE CROW 1994, dir. Alex Proyas

Ngl i prefer the 2016 version purple on the right.

in which I watch other hobbies learn about the problem of getting consistent dye lots

@mamoru

what you have to understand is lamy dark lilac (2016, the real lamy dark lilac) still gets sold for hundreds of dollars per bottle by resellers when it originally sold for $10. and people bought it because they loved that limited edition ink so much. LDL is one of the grail inks for fountain pen ink collectors, and one of the most common reasons to mix fountain pen ink is to try to imitate it.

but the dyes used in the original lamy dark lilac are no longer even available, and it took several lamy representatives promising it was the exact same ink before anyone told the truth. and remember: THE DYES WERE NEVER AVAILABLE FROM THE START OF PRODUCTION. this is not a matter of inconsistency between batches, lamy knew that the ink would have to be completely different and they called it dark lilac anyway while several of their representatives communicated that it was the exact same ink.

people were fighting and fighting and fighting because it was obviously a different formula, it looked different, but lamy said it was the same, so the person doing the swab of the color must have been wrong, because lamy would never lie. and then when lamy admitted it was a completely different ink, there was fighting about whether or not it is wrong to call a product a re-release of the something while it is completely different. some lamy fans refuse to admit lamy can ever do anything wrong, when they do a ton of shit wrong.

there was no reason to call this ink a re-release of dark lilac other than as a cash grab for any sucker who had the gall to believe that when lamy calls something a re-release of one of the most beloved fountain pen inks of all time, that it would actually be the same ink.

I personally think that if you claim to be re-releasing one of the most famous inks in the world, it should actually be the same ink, or name it something different. lamy deep lilac. lamy new lilac. lamy green lilac because of the green sheen instead of the gold sheen lamy dark lilac became famous for. fucking, anything else

lamy is a piece of work, their quality control has been shit for years, and they make a ton of money by enshittifying their products for people who miss when they were less trash.

damn good thing the entire company just got bought out by mitsubishi pencil company.

Ok, but y'all.

On *high quality* paper? The color isn't even CLOSE to the original. Like, the photo that the WSJ is using doesn't even show it off at its best. If you look at a pen retailer's review, like Goulet Pens, here, there's a really good set of photos on different paper types (because with fountain pens that makes a heck of a difference, trust me).

To pull one image from the review I linked:

Like. Can you look at that and tell me they look even CLOSE to each other? (For folk not into fountain pens, Tomoe River paper - such as this - is considered the best paper you can use)

So yeah. There's RAGE at Lamy for daring to do this to us, even though it's a function of the original pigments no longer being available.

That last sample brings up further drama in the fountain pen community: Tomoe River paper.

Fountain pens need special paper. Most paper is designed to work with ballpoint pens, which require a certain amount of pressure and friction to function. If you use a fountain pen on normal paper, it usually absorbs too much ink and causes your writing to bleed and feather. The absorption issue means that many fountain pen-friendly papers are fairly thick.

Enter the Tomoegawa Paper Company. They manufactured an exceedingly thin, smooth paper with a special coating on both sides. This coating allows fountain pen ink to sit on top of the paper until it dries, without bleeding through to the other side or feathering into indistinct shapes. It's also ideal for inks that have special effects, like the green sheen seen in the sample of LAMY Dark Lilac 2024, and it gives a more accurate ink color. Fountain pen enthusiasts tend to be fond of Japanese paper in general, as there are several manufacturers of very thin paper that still tolerates fountain pen ink, but Tomoe River was the gold standard.

Until they switched the machine used to manufacture that paper, and then announced they were ceasing production entirely in 2021.

Fortunately for pen fanatics, the company Sanzen purchased the remaining stock of "new" Tomoe River paper, as well as the formula and rights to the name. Tomoe River paper lives on, but it isn't the same.

The new Tomoe River paper is still very thin and lightweight, and still an excellent paper for fountain pen inks. Most of the reviews I've read say the new paper is just as high-quality as the old paper, and that the differences may even be improvements depending on your personal preference (apparently the new paper is just slightly "toothier," making it work better with everything that isn't a fountain pen). But I'm sure you all know how fanatics can be: it isn't the same, and will therefore never be good enough.

I believe the example above is from the new Tomoe River paper. Here's a link to a Reddit post comparing old and new LAMY Dark Lilac on a variety of papers, including two different Tomoe River samples (the second photo is labeled as old Tomoe River, but the caption says it's from the #9 machine, which is the new machine, so I'm guessing this is paper made on the new machine before they sold the formula).

@giftober 2023 | Day 6: red

Ruby Lucas in Once Upon a Time