There are two kinds of fountain pens; or rather, there are two kinds of fountain pen nibs. There are the kind that have a little ball or flattened wedge at the

There are two kinds of fountain pens; or rather, there are two kinds of fountain pen nibs. There are the kind that have a little ball or flattened wedge at the end — which makes the stroke of them uniform, and thereby essentially just makes them into an "aesthetic" ballpoint pen. That's the kind that the article is talking about. It's silly, but I don't think it's the kind you used. These nibs really are engineered to just act like a ballpoint pen in a weird shape — they are paired with more viscous inks, whose surface tension prevents outflow except on dry paper, and so stops blotting. Then there's the other kind — the kind with a nib that comes to a sharp, thin, flexible point of metal — which is the "traditional" fountain pen that someone from the early 1900s would recognize. I think this is the kind you recall using. I don't think anyone today is of the opinion that a "traditional" fountain pen makes a good "writing pen", any more than a hunk of charcoal would make a good "writing pencil." They're not for that. (At least, not any more.) "Traditional" fountain pens are instead sold and marketed, in the modern era, as being for art — specifically, calligraphy. Where all of the things you mentioned aren't really a problem, because you're being very careful and slow and exacting, to put down a sparing and precisely-controlled amount of ink, on very carefully selected paper, after a lot of practice strokes on scrap paper.