PSA: Feedback is not drag

I've gotten a lot of my friends pen-enabled over the past years. They in turn have gone ahead and gotten their other friends in our little cult fountain pen community.

So a lot of the time, I get asked for recommendations for pens. Most of the time it is for their first "adult" pen, or their first big purchase. Most of them want a gold nib, and so I usually recommend my favorite gold nib: Sailor 21k <M>. This can be found in the 1911L (not anymore) and the Pro Gear (Standard) and many other of their pens, but those are on the cheaper side.

But I always get this rebuttal, which is that "But Sailor is very feedbacky". And to that I tell them that yes indeed it does, and it is absolutely delightful. To this they often say, "Well, I want something super smooth, like buttah" (yes, no hard R).

And this is when I realized that people don't necessarily know the difference between drag and feedback. Feedback is a tactile feel that you get when writing. Sailor pens often feel like writing with a luxurious 4B pencil. The pen writes smoothly, but you get a special tactile feedback that is just delicious.

Drag however is the feeling that you get when you want the pen to move faster but it doesn't because either the ink flow isn't fast enough to keep up with your handwriting or the nib is too thin (especially with Japanese EF nibs).

Feedback is not drag. You don't want drag. You may love feedback like me though.