Hobby's Pen Spinning Blog

I am just an old fart that has watched a lot of pen spinning videos, edited a few small things, and wanted to say my thoughts (and have fun nitpicking about my specific preferences).

This blog post is not meant to point out people and say that you're making CVs wrong. I've made all of these mistakes as a crappy editor as well, and I'm honestly just happy people are still making CVs. So, if any of these apply to you: don't be so hard on yourself! Especially because these are just my preferences with CVs. 😅

Anyways, here are the pet peeves of a old pen spinner:

1. Non-JEB spinners using Japanese music.

To me, I want to see uniqueness in music choices so that other communities can stand out and be different.

FPSB 5th really stood out to me "growing up with pen spinning", because the music choice was so different from any of the JapEn videos.

I understand pen spinners all have different music tastes. I'm only saying this because I just think in a very community-focused way. 😅

2. Music syncing.

At around 1:55, you can see how Joshin emphasizes this musical point by zooming in here, and continues it with the transition to aoneko's video reveal. I find that the best CVs continuously sync with the music from beginning to end.

I think that all visuals need to directly react to the music to feel satisfying. I tend to see a lot of editors that have a sense of graphic design and skill with editing, but haven't incorporated the creative visual reaction that is driven by the music. It's not always easy!

3. Distraction from the pen spinning performance.

I'm seeing a lot of editing where there are animations that are purely for the aesthetic, which distract me from watching the pen spinning itself.

An article about filmmaking concepts that inspired me to think about where a viewer is looking on the screen at any given time.

It's a subtle, but difficult, skill to guide an audience's eyes towards parts of the screen. Using the more modern 16:9 aspect ratio makes it even more difficult, because there will be more stuff on the screen to distract people.

Final Thoughts: Who is the audience?

With all that said: I'm actually very happy people are still editing and making collaboration videos. I see a lot of great stuff that people are making!

I'll leave you with some food for thought:

Collaboration videos are great for the pen spinning community, but are they great for the public? If our goal is to spread pen spinning everywhere, is my nitpicking about music syncs that important? Spending the extra time to incorporate the things I said could be important, sure. But, is it really going to attract any more new spinners than other types of videos? Non-spinners are not going to be focused on the pen spinning because it is hard for them to keep track of. Is it better to fill the video with other interesting things? Or is it better to separate our non-spinner-oriented CV media and call it a different name? Is that even worth it to do so? What do you think? :o

This is my way of tricking people to think more deeply about pen spinning as always. 🤣 I personally think that collaboration videos is a huge part of pen spinning culture and should stay the same way. But I think it's a fun exercise to be open to different things, especially when it concerns growing the hobby for everyone.

Hope you enjoyed my rant! See you next time!

Extras

Preface

Over the years, I’ve done a lot of pen spinning community work where I made mistakes and learned from my experiences. Now that I’ve grown up a bit and fell out of the loop for a while, I was close to just completely moving on. But I think I want to leave a small message in this blog post: some of my hopes for the future of the pen spinning community. In this article, I hope to outline some of the issues of the community and ways to solve these problems.

Introduction

Without UPSB (Universal Pen Spinning Board, an old message board) and the world competitions, the international/English-speaking pen spinning community has become decentralized. This decentralization has led to scattered pen spinning communities run by influencers and notable spinners. While I don’t have an immediate issue with the current state, I do see room for improvement in the community culture, activity, and leadership.

Creating a Better Environment

The attitudes and behaviour on social media all suffer very similar problems as the pen spinning community. Some communities attract different personalities and are better at dealing with these issues, which help keep their culture welcoming and consistent. Being aware of these problems and having a more positive mindset can help the community be a better place. Whether you are just roaming on social media, a member of a group, or a Discord server owner, anyone can set an example for others.

Discussion of Opinions

ProZD, a YouTube personality, comedically describes the attitudes online when people have opinions.

“Opinions on the internet” is a topic that has been subject to jokes and discussion for a long time, but it’s a solvable problem in the community. Pen spinners tend to be very opinionated, passionate people that are truly stubborn and not always open to new ideas. For inclusiveness and the progress of new ideas, we need to understand each other. Whether it’s about controversial influencers, World Tournament criteria, aesthetic/technical spinning, and even opinions on favourite pen spinners: Practicing active listening and putting ego aside is how we can become more welcoming and productive. 

Active listening is a topic that has been covered quite well, so I encourage everyone to do a quick Google search to look into it more. “By actively listening to another person, a sense of belonging and mutual understanding between the two individuals is created.” Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_listening 

Constructive Criticism and Encouragement

Making newer spinners feel welcome and increasing what Discord calls Member Activation, is improved by always encouraging them and constructively criticizing when appropriate.

When I was making the "Taste the Rainbow" collaboration video (one of my first CVs ever, it’s terrible), I was thinking about inviting some pen spinners to film for it. i.suk, who is now very well-known internationally, encouraged me to “invite the world!” Simple gestures like this really give newer spinners a feeling of inclusiveness that help motivate them in pen spinning.

Other ways to encourage pen spinners:

Social media engagement: Liking posts, reposting, reacting (Discord)

Commenting: “Nice!”, “Good work!”, etc.

JackyMacky, formerly active on UPSB, posted entertaining parody songs giving voice to pen spinners' frustrations and identity. In this video, he sings about the problems of the community being harsh on newcomers to a Miley Cyrus song. Many pen spinners on UPSB found the parody songs hilarious and relatable. Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1nLzSpcmNVGnRcDxGGkjojHHDN5PyIOv

Knowing the context and motivation of the pen spinner before giving them criticisms is crucial for encouragement. For example, if the video a newcomer posts is meant to show a trick they just learned, or just something casual to be put out there; it's not the right context for proper critique. If the pen spinner asks for critiques, or a more experienced pen spinner asks and they agree to hear some advice, it becomes more appropriate. 

Regardless of where you stand on unsolicited/solicited advice, well-thought constructive criticisms will also help pen spinners improve. Critiquing isn’t necessarily limited to pen spinning itself: the editing of video projects, organization/planning of events, or (if you’re close to them) even how they conduct themselves online.

When it comes to constructive criticism, I really believe in the idea of telling someone the things they did well and well as things to improve. It helps the criticism sting a bit less, as well as help the pen spinner know what they should keep doing. I wrote a (meh) blog post about this topic over 4 years ago: https://hobbylogics.tumblr.com/pos...

Casual Pen Spinners and Quitting

In our community, there is an attitude of distaste for casual spinners and those “quitting” the community quickly without a trace. If the community becomes a place where casuals are not welcome, then we immediately lose another way for pen spinning to be spread and heard around the world.

Recently, at a local club meeting (unrelated to pen spinning), I saw someone spinning pens and showing someone else the tricks they were doing. If we ostracize these people from our community, we will be seen in a very negative light by non-spinners. We still have to put our effort into newer members of the community even if they just want to learn a few tricks to fidget in class.

As for the topic of quitting: If you see signs of burnout from a pen spinner that you know, try to give them the support they need! Especially in competitive pen spinning, we see a lot of pen spinners getting exhausted. Sometimes they just need a reminder to take it easy or talk about something other than pen spinning.

Mob Mentality

Some may argue there's no justice in mob justice at all.

The importance of our responsibility when influencing the young demographic in the community is emphasized by the issues arising from cancel culture, call-out culture, and mob mentality of social media. Bad mouthing people, going on crusades for your own opinions are not ways to help the community. If anything, they serve to separate them even more. 

For example, think of the relationship between The Workshop Discord server and Lantz/Oleg/Penstock’s server. There were several Workshop members at the time causing trouble in Penstock's server and wanting to raid them.

Being combative with a different group or community will only incentivize the other to fight back. We have to be better, and kindly remind others to do so as well. Becoming a more inclusive, encouraging, and helpful person can help the environment of our community.

Activity

Hopefully Adam West can slap some sense into the pen spinning community!

Perhaps due to the decentralization, the international/English-speaking community has been less active, but there are ways to help with that. Just having an interest in pen spinning and being active will help keep the pen spinning hobby alive. But, there are several ways to contribute a bit more.

Events

Organizing collaboration videos (CVs)

Organizing small tournaments or tack-on

Hashtags on social media to encourage filming or blog posts or learning!

Marketing

Producing + posting content

Filming pen spinning videos

Writing blog posts

Unofficial solos (SVs)

Promotional videos (PVs)

Talking about pen spinning outside of the community

Getting other people into the hobby

Creating a club at your school/city

However, the last and very crucial key to keep the community together is in the leadership we have.

Leadership

A community leader needs to care deeply about pen spinning and the community. They need to be motivated by their love and passion for the hobby, not exclusively for profit and attention. Having this kind of motivation is the fuel for a community leader to help progress the community AND pen spinning itself.

Herenz, a TWPS (Taiwanese Pen Spinning) pen spinner shares his ideas on "Plane-based Thinking", a different way to think about showing rotations. Being a very skilled pen spinner that shares ideas to the community allows everyone to learn and build upon those ideas. Source: https://medium.com/@Herenz/plane-based-thinking-in-pen-spinning-ee2390a0f9b9 

There’s several ways you can show leadership skills that are not exclusive to this list, but here’s a place to start:

Being a skilled pen spinner that educates others (Ex. Herenz in the example above!)

Being a role model by just being inclusive, helpful, and welcoming (aspects discussed in this article)

Organizing ambitious, unique, and exciting events/projects (World tournament, SpinFest, etc.)

..and more!

While there are specific personalities and skills that could help with leadership, just having the proper motivation will impact the community in a positive way.

Final Words 

Be kind, empathetic, and welcoming! Although the community is currently less active and decentralized, making it a nice place is still very important. I think that most people will become tired of toxic behaviour and leave. Kindness, empathy, and inclusiveness are what I truly believe will keep the pen spinning community going.

Special thanks to: Tigres, RPD, Tombuto, Maja, and Nova!

Thank you all for taking the time to answer my questions and giving me information and perspectives on the community! 

...And thank YOU for reading until the end!

Extras

I thought of writing this while I was rewatching some of my old videos, and I'm always struck by nostalgia, but this time I just felt like I needed to write something. I also really missed writing articles as well. There aren’t many things I can speak from experience, but pen spinning is one topic I felt like I could say my piece about. There’s just something very satisfying to me about neatly explaining your thoughts in a blog post.

Interviews

I asked Maja, president of an in-person pen club, to answer a few questions about how she manages her community.

Any hobby has people who will have a snobby or elitist attitude. This was very common in the pen spinning community as well. How did/do you manage these sentiments and create an inclusive community?

Maja: “In every email I send to a brand-new member or prospective new member, I include this line: ‘There is no snobbery and it doesn't matter to us whether a member owns one pen or a thousand — it's their enthusiasm and interest in the hobby that counts!’ If I sense that someone is acting snobby during a meeting, I will gently remind everyone that we're not snobs.”

For any person in a community leadership position, you need drive and passion. What has kept you going all these years? What keeps you interested in the hobby? What drives you to serve others in the community, encourage the existence of the industry, and continue to foster a culture of knowledge sharing instead of only serving yourself?

Maja: “There are two things that help sustain me in this leadership position. First and foremost is the support and gratitude of the people in our pen club — that is truly priceless, especially since this is a volunteer position that uses up more of my free time than many people realize. The second thing is my love of fountain pens (which started over 23 years ago) and the enjoyment of being in a club with people who share that passion. The things that keep me interested are all the things I've learned and continue to learn from my fellow pen club members during our meetings.”

I also asked Nova, the owner of a penpal and stationery Discord server, some questions about the community. 

Do you find the community of people that are interested in stationery and journaling are more kind and respectful of others? I personally haven't seen any oddball occurrences of any particularly disrespectful people.

Nova: “It has been my experience that most of servers for journaling and stationery are usually really warm, welcoming places! I can't flat out say that people in our niche are nicer than others, but we do seem to band together and tolerate one another pretty well!”

This point closely follows some ideas I mentioned with Maja about how non-competitive hobbies have an atmosphere that attracts different personalities than competitive ones. Pen spinning is a more skill-focused, competitive hobby.

Back on UPSB, there was a thread made that discussed the relationship between older members and newcomers. I did a bit of digging to give myself a reminder and some perspective. Source: https://web.archive.org...upsb.info...why-do-you-think-experienced-spinners-dislike-inexperienced-spinners-vice-versa.518/ 

sbrebrown, a well-known personality in the fountain pen community, speaks about his thoughts on the psychology behind communities.  “Imagine walking down a street and seeing someone's front door...You don't like the paint of that door, [so] you walk up to that person's driveway. You ring the doorbell, they open [and] you say, “Your paint sucks!” It would take an insane person to do that, but online that's completely accepted.“  I think this quote illustrates how judgmental and aggressive people can be on the internet.

Preface

If you haven’t seen on Twitter, I posted a poll to ask if people were interested in reading what I have so far for the finger positioning guide. Since I’m not going to have time, energy, or general motivation in finishing this, I figure I should release what I have. If you missed that blog post about what’s going on with me you can read it here: https://hobbylogics.tumblr.com/post/695067437062815744/an-updatereflecting.

However, even though I’m posting what I have I want to make this draft more digestible to read so it isn’t just a jumbled mess of ideas. I’m going to type out some commentary explaining things in between to talk about my thoughts about particular sections or topics. Look for [] the square brackets for the commentary.

Hope you find this guide draft somewhat helpful or at least interesting!

Introduction

Even if you haven’t been thinking about finger positioning, it’s likely that you’ve already taken steps to improve yours. It’s common for people to copy the finger positioning of how people do a trick when they learn it. You might even have been doing so without realizing! For example, many people try to stick their pinky out during busts.

[I always like to structure my writing in a pretty standard and structured format, maybe it’s a little excessively wordy, but I like how it’s organized when there’s an intro, middle, and end.]

So let me try to walk you through this topic of pen spinning, and hopefully you come out understanding how it works!

Requirements:

Need to know how to plan combos and freestyle.

Know a decent variety of trick families: twisted sonics, baks, arounds, etc.

[The next sections on the theory/concept of Coherence and Consistency are probably the most fleshed out sections in this article because they come with images.]

What is finger positioning?

The placement of all fingers while spinning or catching the pen.

I’ve previously written an article about this topic that was about the specific terminology in finger positioning.

To keep things simple, I’m going to avoid complicating this guide by using the terminology I’ve made but if you’re interested, you’re free to take a look:

https://hobbylogics.tumblr.com/post/617227179235917824/style-clarifying-the-terminology-and-concept-of

What’s the purpose of finger positioning?

The purpose of finger positioning is to enhance the execution. Finger positioning is another tool to improve the visuals of your pen spinning.

What determines good finger positioning?

Only going by personal preference doesn’t tell us what good finger positioning is. So, if we want to be as unbiased as possible, we can’t just think about it in terms of “ugly” and “pretty”.

Instead, we should think about it in terms of consistency and coherence. (If you want it to be corny like some English class, call it the 2 C’s or 2 Degrees of finger positioning if you’d like!)

[Man, the two C’s sound so stupid. I’m leaving it in there just cause that’s how it was when I edited it, maybe you found some entertainment value in my corniness lol.]

Consistency

Consistency in finger positioning means that the fingers are always moved or placed in the same purposeful way when performing a trick.

Unlike with practicing tricks, it’s not really about how much you drop the pen. Consistency in finger positioning is about how consistent and intentional you are with the finger positioning.

[This topic is contradictory to the idea of situational execution, but situational execution is sort of the exception to the rule. You got to know the rules before you break them when you’re first learning, after all.]

In practice, getting consistent finger positioning is pretty simple: You just need to keep practicing the same finger positioning of a trick to commit it to muscle memory.

Finger positioning consistency in all of the tricks you execute will help give your spinning a subtle feeling of confidence, even if the person watching doesn’t notice it specifically.

If you do a bust twice (when trying to do the two busts the same way) and the finger positioning is the same, it shows good control of your fingers!

Coherence

The finger positioning also needs to be coherent. Your finger positioning can’t just look like a bunch of different things slapped together. Just like how a combo won’t work if you put random tricks together, the same goes for finger positioning.

The tricks you choose contribute a lot to the coherence because the finger positioning is part of how tricks are executed. Choosing the right tricks can actually help give coherence to your finger positioning!

Snapshots of HAL in JapEn 7th, 2011. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMBWBhaBwNA

[Pretty proud of these graphics, I sent the Makin and Hal images to RPD when I was working on it to get some thoughts.]

Sometimes, finger positioning can go so far as having a theme. For example, HAL has very flashy spinning and sharp-looking fingers. The way he uses his fingers helps support his flashy style, so if he started outstretching his fingers less, it wouldn’t fit into his spinning.

Now that we’ve taken care of the theory side of things, let’s move on to how to actually practice and use finger positioning to your advantage.

[That was probably the best written part of the entire article, get ready for some jank!]

Coherence: Uniform Fingers

Since consistency is a pretty straightforward topic, we’re going to skip right into talking about coherence in finger positioning!

Having uniform fingers means that your fingers have about the same “look” to them no matter what finger positioning you do.

There are times to break this rule, but it’s good to stabilize of your finger positioning before you start experimenting and changing it up.

In order to achieve more uniform finger positioning, we need to talk about: tensing your fingers, outstretching your fingers, and the space between your fingers.

It’s possible you already have some sort of comfortable uniform finger positioning already, so this might be a quick review for you!

You might be thinking, tensing your fingers isn’t exactly about the position of your fingers, is it? Is it even finger positioning? Well, I don’t know. Regardless of how we’re going to categorize this, it is a very important factor in how your fingers will look when pen spinning.

[Essentially this idea of “uniform fingers” is an attempt to say that you should stabilize your finger positioning the same way you stabilize your wrist movement or execution. A good example for a spinner that is VERY uniform is altema.]

Coherence: Making a Decision

What kind of look do you want for your finger positioning?

Relaxed/Comfortable

Flashy/Exaggerated

[There was a note to myself in the Word document that says “Ask questions similar to style guide on how someone might want to use these topics”, which is what I was planning on fleshing out a bit more in this section of questions.]

If you’re fairly new to pen spinning, then I’d recommend just choosing the things that feel the most comfortable to you. You’re free to be ambitious and choose something you want to strive for, but it can be an uphill battle if any of the choices you make end up not being second nature.

And last of all, there is no right way of doing this. You really need to just experiment until you’re happy with the way your pen spinning looks.

The goal for you in these following sections is to help you decide how you want your overall finger positioning to look. This is also one of the ways you’re going to be able to stabilize your pen spinning. These topics are to help you be more aware of how your fingers are acting while you’re trying to stabilize and correct your finger positioning.

Take the topics as guidelines to help inform you of your finger positioning choices, rather than hard rules about how you should keep your finger positioning uniform. There’s always a time to use curled and outstretched fingers together if it comes to it!

Relaxed or Tensed?

Relaxed and tensed fingers can be done to any finger positioning, (even if the finger is curled!) but it can also affect the look of the spinning if you decide to use it.

Relaxed fingers generally make your spinning look more natural because it’s how most fingers look when they’re resting.

The downside is that it can have a bit of a “lazy” look to it at times if it’s too relaxed, and you actually need to tense-up your fingers somewhat to perform tricks because not all tricks are fingerless!

[”show beat red example as very relaxed spinning”]

For the most part, tense fingers make your tendons on your hand and wrist stand out more, but it’s one of the ways you can make your fingers more stable. That’s because you’re forcing your fingers to be stiff and stable with the muscles in your hand.

The downside is that it can look unnaturally stiff or feel uncomfortable because it can be tiring for your hand to constantly be tense. But it’s still possible to make it work.

[ “show example of tensed fingers that are curled and straight

makin/hal example, point out the tendons on the back of the hand”]

[This idea of relaxed and tensed fingers is heavily inspired by an article that Aimo posted mentioning different factors that affect pen spinning.]

Curled or Outstretched?

In this case, relaxed and tensed refers to how outstretched your fingers are,

[“(picture examples would be helpful here)”]

Curled fingers: looks relaxed, almost lazy

Straight fingers: are in between

Outstretched fingers: can help exaggerate your tricks

Nowadays, most spinners have abandoned spinning with very outstretched and tense fingers. However, it’s something that’s very common in 2012 era pen spinning where people like Nikoo, Hal, Seven really took advantage of having tensed fingers and spreading their fingers out.

The space between your fingers

Another thing to keep in mind while trying to keep your finger positioning uniform is the space in between your fingers.

The amount of space between your fingers is usually affected by the length of your mod, because longer mods make you spread your fingers to reach for the places on the pen that you need to do for a trick.

For example, when you spin a very long mod, you need to reach your fingers towards the end of the pen to do a bak. While if you spin a shorter mod, like a DC comssa, you need to compress your fingers together in order to keep your fingers on the pen.

[DC comssa is honestly not the greatest example, better and clearer if it was MX.]

[“(affected by mod length, HAL example mx vs kt)”]

Finger Positioning Guidelines and Examples

Finger positioning is very subjective and there’s a lot to unpack, so I think we should start by talking about something that everyone is pretty familiar with: keeping your fingers straight.

Should you always try to keep your fingers straight as much as possible?

Absolutely not. Some tricks require you to bend your fingers, and certain finger positioning with bent fingers can actually look quite nice.

Taichi explains how stretching all your fingers out is not the golden rule on how to make your finger positioning look good.

[Definitely an incomplete section here, doesn’t have examples and stuff that I’ve expanded on, there’s some ideas listed in the “Scraps” section of random notes I compiled at the end of this article though!]

Getting Started: Let’s try some common finger positioning!

Okay, we’re finally getting to the fun part! But there’s still very important things to go through after these examples!

-          thumb, pinky, and index control (ppl pay attention to these the most)

Some easy places to start are with simple tricks like twisted sonics, baks, and arounds.

[You can tell that the grammar is getting sloppy cause these was an idea dump here. Using “ppl” and not capitalizing “twisted sonics, baks and arounds”.]

[“Twisted sonic bust makin

Thumbarounds

-thumbaround the world reference see the different finger positioning”]

[The notes above I think were basically describing examples I should use as image or video references?]

There are always wa

[LOL I didn’t even finish this sentence apparently, maybe this is where I stopped writing?]

Generic Finger Positioning: Guidelines are only guidelines, and Common is only Common

As I’ve mentioned previously in the sections above, there are always exceptions to the rule.

[An incomplete section, I’d often write out some big titles to represent the sections in order to help myself structure the entire written guide. It’s important to me that the sections are organized in a meaningful way, and the topics flow into the next one.]

Experimenting

If you’re using new tricks it’s harder to find reference

If you’re using common tricks it’s easier to find reference

Regardless, there’s some experimentation to be done

Watching pen spinning videos

Ask friends or the community for opinions

Experience is key here

Other tips

Practice with webcam on, consider the camera angle

Style: Trick Choice Finger Movement Luck of the draw: Managing your hand Flexibility issues

Flexibility woes ktrinh? Google finger flexibility stuff

[Some more janky and incomplete sections I was laying out.]

Finger Positioning Choices: When do you adjust your finger positioning?

Choosing when to practice finger positioning is very important because of how it can affect consistency and the length of the learning process. It’s possible you might have to relearn the trick completely!

There are three main ways you can practice finger positioning:

After fully learning a trick

Before fully learning a trick

Or a hybrid of both

1. After fully learning a trick

If you’ve been spinning for several years, it’s very likely that you already learned how to do a trick and now you need to adjust the finger positioning. The problem here is that it can make the learning process a lot longer because you might be relearning the trick in a very different way.

[I originally wrote this in Microsoft Word, so the tables are screenshots]

2. Before fully learning a trick

If you have a clear idea of finger positioning you want to use for a trick, then it’s not a bad idea to practice it in that specific way you want before you fully learn a trick. The only problem is that if the trick and finger positioning doesn’t come easy for you, it’s going to be a frustrating uphill battle.

For example, the popular linkage called “NeoSA”. Learning most fingerless tricks or linkages that are already pretty difficult can potentially make your consistency a lot worse if you have the added difficulty of trying to get the proper finger positioning as well.

Of course, this depends on your finger independence, flexibility, and the difficulty of the trick itself.

3. Hybrid

The last, but not least, way to practice finger positioning is by using a hybrid. How you choose to make it a hybrid is completely up to you, but this is the most flexible category if the other options don’t end up working out for you.

You can change your finger positioning in the beginning of the learning process, then slowly adjust it as time goes on.

You can adjust the finger positioning in the beginning and then decide to change it after you learned it properly.

…and more!

It’s entirely up to you, and you can adjust your finger positioning whenever you see fit!

[This section on when to adjust finger positioning has some extremely practical advice in terms of how to learn finger positioning, because it’s not often talked about and is something that I’ve personally went through a lot since changing my style drastically.]

Finger Positioning Choices: Natural, Safe, or Ambitious?

But before we get too deep in the weeds, let’s go through some more choices you’ll make when you choose a particular finger positioning to practice.

There are three different “levels of difficulty” when it comes to finger positioning:

Natural: The most natural and easy finger positioning to get consistent with.

Safe: The finger positioning is different from the natural finger positioning, but is still fairly easy to get consistent with.

Ambitious: Finger positioning that is very difficult to accomplish with your current finger independence and flexibility.

Now, this might seem completely random or unnecessary to point this out, but you might remember that in the previous section, I talked about how you might have to relearn a trick to have your ideal finger positioning.

This relearning process will be easy or difficult depending on if the finger positioning is natural, safe, or ambitious.

Or in i.suk’s words, how much affinity do you have with the finger positioning?

For example, NeoSA is something that some people consider as a trick to constantly improve your finger positioning on.

[This section on finger positioning difficulty is kind of what I’m least confident about showing, because it’s not really necessary for people to understand in order to explain much. The main reason why I included it is because the words “safe” and “ambitious” were words that have been engrained in me from talking to Fideua (LPSA/GPC). I used those words of his to describe similar ideas in this article, but I’ve sort of used those terms to define them as finger positioning difficulty even though the word use is likely based on a feeling or effect.]

Finger Positioning Choices: Making Sacrifices

A lot of pen spinners make sacrifices depending on how ambitious the finger positioning is.

They might choose to go with a safe or natural finger positioning, try to hide certain fingers with the camera angle, or even just refuse to use the trick altogether.

It’s just something to consider and think about as you keep practicing finger positioning.

[The only real reason to even explain finger positioning difficulty is for this tiny section that uses those terms, so I don’t see a huge importance in these ideas. However, I think it shows that trying to teach pen spinning through writing requires me to come up with ways to categorize my ideas in order to teach them properly. In this case, I think the idea of finger positioning difficulty makes sense and I can see what I was trying to go for, but it’s not necessary for teaching finger positioning.]

Scraps

[We made it to my janky, miscellaneous notes that I kept for myself trying to write this article!]

Final Words Extras

(behind the scenes)

Rough drafts on my notebook [I had physically written ideas of this in my notebook that I thought would be fun to share in the extras section when I was done writing.]

Akai and I talking about it in discord

Showing image to RPD

Natural safe ambitious comes from fideua, using it as a concept for learning rather than what he meant at the time

https://aimo.hateblo.jp/entry/2021/10/28/014108 lists out specific visual elements

altema (relaxed)

beat red (relaxed)

jujorous (relaxed)

malimo (relaxed)

hal (tense, flashy)

ooshinraoo (tensed/stretched)

abc/xyz (tensed,stretched)

s777 (hybrid)

fideua (middle)

vgg (middle)

mei (middle)

naru

megas

kune (outstretched)

rex (outstretched)

riason (middle, leaning towards tense)

eriror (middle, but leaning towards relaxed)

[This list of spinners were for examples to use in the article, that I thought would demonstrate an idea I wrote.]

[These images are when I asked Tigres on Discord to give me some advice to use for people who have fingers that are crooked or double jointed. Seeing as I don’t have those issues, it made sense for me to ask him to get some valuable information to put into the article.]

Common examples – bust, tf charge rev, neosa

Toro example, nekura

Bust example makin, kzzn, everchix clip of different busts

I’ve also made a theory article that points out how finger positioning fits into execution: https://hobbylogics.tumblr.com/post/662888263387856896/understanding-pen-spinning-execution-the-two

[This strikethrough point has a comment on the Word document that says: “Add to extras maybe? not necessary for this article”.]

Misconceptions

Since

Keeping fingers straight

Bad quality camera/blurred – smooths out finger appearance

Sleeve – hides wrist and arm

Nails – feminine look and elongating the fingers or making the fingers look sharper

Exceptions - depends on your hand, how it looks, how flexible they are, etc etc

 Move this into small blockquotes in between guidelines section of article instead of taking up a whole section and having the article focus on misconceptions that will only become more well known because you brought it up

[Interesting that I thought that bringing up the misconceptions would only make them more popular cause I brought them up, I don’t remember writing this down at all.]

Final Words

Thank you for taking an interest in my writing, I hope some parts of this article ended up helping you in some way.

I still haven’t quite decided how I want to involve myself in the community again, but I do think that it’s healthier for me if I post things in smaller doses.

Oh hey, it’s been a minute.

Reflecting on 2021

So if it wasn’t obvious enough, I did burn out again. Although, it is a bit different from before. I realized I didn’t really burn out of pen spinning itself, but the work I was doing in podcasts, articles, videos, community management, and social media.

I don’t regret doing any those things last year, though! 

Akai & Hobby Talks Podcast was a great experience being able to talk to a cool friend about a lot of interesting pen spinning topics and to work on a project together. It tested my ability to communicate and work with someone else closely, as well as dive into more of a content-creation direction.

YouTube Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLluZG_USCKTCYH-mZr42GtMJKoPTLP-i7

Writing pen spinning articles was a very time-consuming but rewarding thing to do during COVID. It really helped me vocalize certain ideas I had about pen spinning and it was satisfying to finish writing and see people start to think more deeply about the hobby. Even though I try to influence people’s thoughts with my ideas, my ultimate goal has always been about sparking an interest in dissecting pen spinning and critical thinking.

Blogs:

https://hobbylogics.tumblr.com/ https://hobbyhobbithole.tumblr.com/

Filming and editing pen spinning videos was something I did for a long time before 2021, but I still learned quite a bit. I noticed small things when filming my own pen spinning that allowed me to be more comfortable and perform better on camera. I learned how joining a CV influenced the combos and videos I filmed. I also learned a lot making that “Situational Execution” video.

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/HobbyLogics/videos

The Workshop Discord server is by far my most ambitious and successful pen spinning project I have ever started. I was able to get a staff team together that, at this point, pretty much run the server without the need for me to intervene. This project really tested my ability to delegate work and manage people in a way I’ve never done before.

The Workshop Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/7F4BjWD

Twitter really gave me an opportunity to share a lot of my projects, but also expose myself to what other people think and create in the community too. It made me think a lot more about the timing of posts, and a general idea of what content-creators might feel about PR and marketing themselves online. 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/HobbyLogics

But I realized how mentally draining it was.

For me, pen spinning is an emotional hobby. It can lean towards obsession but even relaxation, from the intense motivation to work on projects all the way to just relaxing at a desk and fidgeting with a mod.  

The projects and pen spinning I was doing were fueled by a huge desire to succeed, to satisfy others and myself. It’s inevitable for it to always be consistent, so it becomes an emotional rollercoaster of recognition, affirmation, frustration, and doubt.

And so, it seems I still need to find some sort of balance there. Kind of re-evaluate what it is I find fun about pen spinning again, and most importantly, find time for it.

(When) will I be back?

Hard to say.

The ridiculous amount of time I spent in the pen spinning community the past two years was because of two main reasons: I stopped working and COVID happened.

And whenever I stop pen spinning, I usually find something else to fill in. This time, it’s a little MMO called Final Fantasy XIV. Been getting into raiding and chatting with people, been real fun. So, that’s been taking up the majority of my time.

The other thing is that I’m back in school, basically more life stuff coming into play again. So, that might prevent me from coming back to the community anytime in the near future.

I still spin casually though, I just don’t practice much or film like I used to.

As for The Workshop, you guys have been basically running the community on your own. And as far as I’m concerned, I trust Padrace and the rest of the staff team. I think you’re in good hands, likely better hands than mine.

Final Words

I learned a lot from these experiences here, and I’m glad that people enjoyed the projects I worked on.

I can’t say when I’ll be around next, but those who know me, you probably know how to reach me. 

If you aren’t as well acquainted with me personally, I still very much appreciate the fact that you’ve read this and I hope you continue to have fun with pen spinning!

Take care, and see you soon?

Hobby

Please enjoy responsibly. 

Download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ofTz_xYsJwMfTE5jrTdTW8dBDfjst1Cd/view?usp=sharing

Music: Second Wind Artist: L'indécis 

This CV had a few ups and downs when I made it, but ultimately I’m pretty happy with the outcome. I think the first “A Moment” CV will always have it’s charm, but I hope you guys enjoyed the sequel as well!

Concept

I wanted to keep this relaxing atmosphere of the previous CV, so I thought I’d pour a beer as the intro. I chose music that had a similar relaxing feeling, but wanted it to feel a little less melancholy compared to the first CV. 

 Also, if you’ve ever talked or seen me talk in passing casually, I’ve probably mentioned that I really enjoy trying out different craft beers!

Although, I couldn’t help myself even after I said I would make this CV seem less cryptic. I added a small Easter egg in the edit, as well as the subtle sound-based ending.

It can be interpreted as the fact that pen spinning is addicting, or a way for some of us to relax. It’s up to interpretation!

Editing

Original song I planned on editing with.

I had to change songs because I didn’t have the clips I felt like I needed to fill out the song duration, so I settled for backup song I had saved. The song “Second Wind” had a less obvious fun and upbeat feeling than “Bopatron”, but definitely more relaxing and in tune with the “A Moment” series.

I also edited the intro and outro before the CV submissions arrived, which was new for me. I ended up having to change the credits quite a bit, but the intro stayed the same for the most part. The footage of the beer being poured into the glass was filmed a few months before the announcement of the CV sign-ups as well, so I definitely did a lot of extra prep work for this one.

A Few Editing Lessons to Learn From:

Had a bit of a scare when I released the CV too, Timeless pointed out that m1ch1 and Altttt’s submissions were stretched so I rushed to render and repost it. It turns out to be the pixel aspect ratio of the submissions that were different than my project file settings. I’m guessing it’s a thing that’s specific to certain cameras.

Another issue came up when I realized that freely capitalizing the spinner names for my editing purposes could become an issue, after seeing m1ch1′s tweet. Just something to keep in mind to avoid problems in the future.

There’s nothing too too special about the editing in this CV, it’s meant to be simple editing, but I got to experiment with colour correcting the submissions more. Hopefully they were some subtle changes that helped support the atmosphere of the CV.

I really enjoy editing simple CVs like this. It’s not too technical, but since they’re simple, each of the edits have to be deliberate. So, it’s a nice feeling to sit down and really dial in a specific transition or camera motion of a CV submission.

Organizing

I was also given a critique about the way I organized this CV. I meant to make a personal CV that was fun for me and also had a fun atmosphere, but it could easily be interpreted as a CV where you submit casual clips. Next time, I could be more explicit with my intentions there.

I’m very glad to see new pen spinners try to submit, so I apologize for the heavy filtering. Because of the invites and some of the other submissions, it caused a bit of skill gap which was difficult to deal with.

Spinners

We revisit our old invites: Akai and Nare, but also Tigres this time. I pretty much always end up inviting people I know, just seems more comfortable for me that way. 

Nare was actually nice enough to try to talk a bit about what kind of combo I was looking for from an invite. I thought it was a neat way to communicate better on what to expect, not too sure if it’s that common in CV organizing though. Nare is just fun to talk to in general so he makes it easy.

Here are some of my honest thoughts of your combos:

mei

Surprised at how refined your spinning is. Pretty consistent speed, which also makes it very fitting for the first spinner of the CV before the music progresses further.

Tigres

Cool to see a DC combo from you. The light on your setup is a bit bright, and you slowed down quite a bit before the finisher, but the combo flows nicely.

coffeelucky

I’m a fan of this type of combo you film because your execution is much cleaner. Your finisher could be a bit tidier though, maybe just some finger positioning adjustment for the catch that could help give it better impact.

Mango

Good flow to this combo, some cool direction changes in there. Your setup could be better though, there’s slight offcam moments. Lighting needs work as well, but I’m sure you’re aware because I’ve seen you talk about your setup on Twitter.

Akai

Great stuff as always, clean presentation and nice spinning. Only complaint is the catch of your finisher trick.

Joi

I’m happy to include a new spinner in one of my CVs, pretty nice stability, could use a bit of polish, but the spinning speed makes it pretty fitting for this CV!

Noishi

Nice all around, the sonics helps a lot to add a little extra something to your spinning. Like in the previous CV, a perfect combo for the quiet moment of the song.

Whitetiger

Glad to include another new pen spinner into the CV. I liked how you planned your combo with the direction changes being a big highlight. Presentation could be a touch better, there’s a monitor off-screen that spilled blue light on the desk and your hand. Keep working on your execution and presentation!

m1ch1

Nice use of arm movement, been enjoying your spinning with DCs lately. Camera might be just a touch too close, small part of your spinning was off-camera towards the finisher.

Sweg

Bit of a strange combo starter, very confident towards the finisher though. Definitely a slower speed than I’m used to seeing from your spinning, but not bad overall.

Nare

I liked the way you use your arm movement to emphasize certain tricks, while changing your spinning speed for the pacing. Perfect video to use for the “coda” or “solo” section of the song.

Altttt

Very well-structured and overall well-executed combo. There’s some small execution issues with the finisher sequence, but the speed and structure of the combo makes for a good finale to the CV.

Extras

The video in the intro of the CV was filmed in July with a janky-ass setup. I used a gooseneck phone holder to film it. Used a iPhone 8 plus this time to film it though, a bit of an upgrade from my old 6S.

Next time though, I should really remember to disable the auto white balance cause it really messed with my ability to colour correct it. I guess I could have keyframed it but it would have made life easier.

Requirements for this article

This article is intended for pen spinners that have filmed several combos and are interested in improving and understanding execution.

New Pen Spinners: If you’re not very experienced with pen spinning quite yet, you can still read this article to get an idea of execution.

Experienced Pen Spinners: If you’re a more experienced pen spinner, this article should be straightforward, and hopefully an interesting theory article to think about.

What is Execution?

First of all, what is execution? 

Sometimes it’s used as general term to describe the aesthetics in a combo. 

Other times, it’s used as a very descriptive category to evaluate pen spinning – Pen Spinning World Tournament 2021 uses execution in their judging criteria to help put numbers to different aspects, such as control and tempo.

A screenshot of the WT21 Rulebook, outlining the execution criteria. Source: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bX2etCm6x...

Definition of Execution

But I think we should go for a simpler answer here instead:

Execution is the way pen spinning is carried out.

The Two Categories

Because execution is still a pretty general term, let’s categorize it into two groups that help make it easier to follow.

There are two main categories of execution: technical and performance.

Important to note: These two categories are written in this article just to help explain execution, they are not currently used in the English-speaking community.

Technical

The technical side of execution is a category that includes everything that is objective and is, in theory, the easiest to judge.

What does that even mean?

Well, you can easily judge how circular someone’s spinning is and even go so far as using a perfect circle to measure how circular the spinning in a video is.

What you can’t judge as perfectly is how much “prettier” a spinner is when compared to others because beauty is, of course, in the eye of the beholder.

An arys unofficial solo edited by rpzn.

Arys’ spinning is a great example of very good technical execution because of how stable and circular his spinning is. 

Examples of Technical Execution:

Circular rotations

Consistently circular or oval

Full 360° rotations

Stability

Stable wrist and arm movement

Stable fingers

Performance

Performance execution has to do with a pen spinner’s idiosyncrasies or character. This category is the subjective side of execution, which means it has a lot more to do with personal preference.

What does that mean?

Well, it’s kind of like “dressing-up” your execution. For example, you can intentionally add arm movement that isn’t necessary to do a trick. Since the arm movement is also mostly personal preference, there will definitely be people who like it and dislike it. 

Performance execution is a very fun area for spinners to experiment with and be able to stand out from the crowd.

hash’s combo for Patchwork #2. PV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIWUovXeJ00

Hash used to spin with fairly minimal wrist and arm movement, but recently he started using it more, incorporating more of the performance side of execution. 

Examples of Performance Execution:

Finger positioning

Finger movement

Wrist/arm movement

Speed and speed changes

Hand appearance

The Balancing Act

Technical and performance execution are both needed for good execution because lacking in one category can tend to make the spinning look too robotic or too sloppy. 

Technical execution is always needed to show a good foundation, but it can tend to make a lot of pen spinning look unnatural or uncomfortably stable, even if it might be considered perfect execution in the technical sense.

An old Vain combo for Nacht-Vision. CV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrEdF23Q_fE

In the past, Vain’s spinning was met with a lot of criticism because the performance execution was lacking, and it made many people complain that his pen spinning was boring to watch. Nowadays, his spinning has a lot more “life” to it because of the flashier speed changes in his spinning. 

On the other hand, performance execution can show the uniqueness of a pen spinner, and enhance the spinning with arm movement and other elements. However, without the solid foundation of technical execution, the pen spinning can end up looking jagged.

Juminuwo’s submission to “fromnowhere”. CV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1ROb0ObwCY

Juminuwo was a fairly well-recognized spinner from PSUK during 2012. He caught quite a bit of attention because of his abundant use of arm and wrist movement. Similar to a lot of pen spinners in the same era, Jumiuwo’s spinning is also pretty unstable at times. 

As a result, a balance has to be made between technicality and performance. Whether someone specializes in one category or not, both need to be present for the pen spinning to really shine.

Final Words

With these two categories, I hoped this article helped you understand execution more clearly. There’s obviously a lot more topics to explore within execution, such as: circular rotations, finger positioning, arm movement, and so on. 

But, for now: Experiment with execution, keep pen spinning, and most importantly, have fun!

Extras

While I was slowly working on the ideas for this article, I noticed Coffeelucky’s messages on The Workshop Discord server describing a very similar concept that came from JEB:

I thought about some ideas on value in pen spinning today, and I feel like it might be interesting to talk about.

In this blog post, it’s not so much about what’s right or wrong, but it’s about what you prefer and what direction pen spinning will move to in the future.

With all that being said, I hope this topic prompts you to think more about pen spinning and encourage you come up with well-reasoned opinions and ideas.

The Value in Subtlety

In the old-school Korean style of pen spinning, it took me a long time to notice the important subtleties of execution and trick use. Being so focused on aesthetics in pen spinning, any subtlety in technical pen spinning goes over my head, although I’m aware it exists.

But it brings up this idea of cost-benefit in the subtlety of pen spinning: in aesthetic spinning, improving execution has diminishing returns, but the final result is very skillful. On the other hand, in difficult or creative spinning, there’s a lot of interesting subtle details in the linkages that most people don’t notice.

The people that do notice are likely superfans of the “genre” of pen spinning, or people practicing in that type of pen spinning.

Even though kudo has an incredibly refined charge, his general pen spinning with Twisted Sonics doesn’t show his skill with charges as clearly unless he specifically uses them. 

In this video, his sonic clip is subtle but very well executed. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOTjVPVeb_E

Regardless of how apparent the subtlety is, it’s still skillful. Without this kind of depth in pen spinning, it’s doubtful that a lot of the experienced pen spinners in the community would still stick around.

But here’s the problem:

Even though there’s clearly value in the subtlety of pen spinning, how much does it matter?

Is it worth it even if it takes more work just to get a subtle effect?

Are we limited to pleasing the audience of specific types of pen spinning, like technical fans or aesthetic fans?

Or is it better to try and appeal to a wider pen spinning audience?

Or even a non-spinner audience?

Does bigger, general appeal make the pen spinning better or worse?

But before you decide to crack open Twitter and prime your fingers for yet another “hot take”, let’s talk about China.

The Value in Community Culture

Japanese pen spinner, Kay, performing at the WPSAL event in Dongguan, China (2019). Source: https://youtu.be/yRqM_4Jrao0?t=1156

China’s live pen spinning competitions are unlike anything in the rest of the world. The publicity, business, and money being spent in these events are very unique to the PSH community.

It just so happens that the pen spinning that’s valued in China’s live competitions is stage spinning, or “stand-up” as it was called in PSO20. And with this type of format, subtlety in pen spinning is hard to show on the stage.

Even though the Nope Element was advertised internationally, the mod itself is grounded in PSH. For a community that values stage spinning, power, and consistency, the weight of the mod being above 20 grams is no surprise. Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/COk_rMQN5vS/

So, then:

Is stage spinning the more accessible solution to pen spinning?

Will it create a genre of pen spinning that only focuses on highlights and pacing, no subtlety?

Will stage spinning only flourish in China?

Will the Chinese live competitions eventually go out of business when interest dies out?

No, bad dog! Don’t go on Twitter. There’s one more thing we should consider: history.

The Value of an Era

Sometimes, it’s very interesting to go back and watch videos from the different “eras” of pen spinning. It really tells us a lot about how pen spinning has grown, and in this case, what kind of pen spinning has been left behind.

One of Drowsy’s main inspirations is frikyu. One of Jujorous’s favourite pen spinners is 02.

And yet, their favourite pen spinners don’t hold up perfectly to the test of time, do they? But the reason why those pen spinners became their favourites is more so due to the context of that era, their personal preference, and what pen spinning was valued at the time.

nhk_9’s opinions on modern pen modifications, although relatable, seem pretty archaic to most of us, because better pen mods have helped us make further progress in discovering difficult tricks, and even made it easier for people to learn tricks. Source (Comment Section of Video): https://www.youtube.com/wat...

nhk_9’s pen spinning skill is clear, but his spinning and his opinions are quickly overshadowed by our modern pen spinning values. 

So, looking to the future:

What types of pen spinning will die out?

Will Chinese stage spinning be one of them?

Will your own style of pen spinning lose value in the future?

What direction will pen spinning go?

What values will change in the future?

Final Words

If you read up to this point, you either have time to waste reading my useless rambling or you at least care somewhat about the subtlety, culture and history of pen spinning. And I’m sure you have a ton of opinions and ideas you agree or disagree with.

With the PBoD slowly becoming more transparent, World Tournament pushing innovation of pen spinning, different pen spinning communities finding a place on social media, and even with Nope talking about pen spinning business models to potentially provide the community with more opportunities, we look to the future of pen spinning.

So, what matters to you?

What do you value in pen spinning?

What do you like or dislike about pen spinning right now?

...and what do you hope for in the future? 

Thank You!

I wrote this article not really knowing where it was going, and I ended up exploring a lot of different topics. I was thinking I might talk about this on one of the next Akai & Hobby Talks podcasts, but I felt like writing it out this time.

You can view the entire article in a Google Doc if you prefer: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BL0BNJDogA7r4mikeCgDw1OEWLXby3Q_F0jqmooumZo/edit?usp=sharing

Requirements for this article

This article is intended for pen spinners that have filmed several combos and are beginning to fully understand the process of it.

New Pen Spinners: If you’re not very experienced with pen spinning quite yet, you can still read this article to get an idea of what to think about in the future. For now, it’s more important to try to work on being able to plan a combo and film it. Having that experience will help make this article easier to follow. (Watching plenty of pen spinning videos will help a lot too!)

Experienced Pen Spinners: If you’re a more experienced pen spinner, then this article will probably be more simple for you.

What is Style?

Style is an incredibly vague and opinionated concept in pen spinning that is essential for any spinner to work on.

In a lot of ways, developing your style improves your pen spinning in general. Developing your style improves different elements in your pen spinning that work well together.

But people use the word style so casually in many different contexts, so what does the word style even mean?

Definitions of Style

It’s important to clarify the definition of style because people tend to just casually use the word to explain things in conversation. So, let’s back up a bit and revisit what the word style originally meant.

There are two main definitions:

1. The first definition of style is, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “a particular manner or technique by which something is done, created, or performed.” For example, “The popularity of Drowsy’s style of pen spinning has influenced pen spinners around the world.”

2. The second definition of style refers more to general beauty, or aesthetics. Merriam-Webster describes the word in this context as, “beauty, grace, or ease of manner or technique”. For example, someone might say, “That pen spinner has no style!”

A mind-map that shows how style is made up of a lot of different pen spinning elements. Keep in mind that these are not the only style elements in pen spinning, just a picture that gives a general idea.

For this article, we’ll be using the first definition of the word style. Style will be the umbrella term that involves all relevant pen spinning elements, such as difficulty or execution.

Execution is about how well the pen spinning is performed. It’s the general sense of how nice the spinning looks.

Difficulty is the, well, difficulty of the pen spinning. Pretty straightforward, although it can get a bit complicated once you try to learn what can make tricks difficult.

These two elements of pen spinning have become staples as part of the criteria in the Pen Spinning World Tournament, as well as common terms spoken in the community.

Now that we understand how we’re using the word style in this article, how do you develop your style? Well, you’ll need to start with your direction in pen spinning.

What is Direction?

Style direction is not the direction that your pen spins during a trick, but the decisions that you make that will affect your style. It’s what tricks you decided to learn and master, or what area of pen spinning that ended up being the most fun for you to explore. It’s the direction you take with your style.

Direction is not an official term that the pen spinning community uses, it’s just meant as a way to help you understand how to go about developing your style.

Understanding this topic will help you on making many stylistic decisions down the road, as well as answer a lot of deeper questions about your approach to pen spinning.

How to Find a Direction

Unfortunately, this is the one topic that I can’t directly help you with. Why? Because, I can’t tell you what you want your style to be. However, what I can do is help guide you with some important questions to think about that will help you discover your direction in your pen spinning. There will be a list of questions further below.

If you have some friends in the pen spinning community, don’t hesitate to ask them for some advice or opinions. They might even know you better than you know yourself!

Do I have to decide on my direction right now?

Definitely not. You can take your time and experiment with areas of pen spinning and decide which you like. Just take a look at the following list of questions for a bit and think about it slowly. Many pen spinners, including myself, actually decide to change their style completely later on! Some other examples include: Shadix and Denial.

A comparison between Shadix’s old and new style of pen spinning.

What will answering these questions help me discover?

Decide what your ideal pen spinning would look like, and make it a goal that is possible for you to reach.

Learn your likes and dislikes in pen spinning as a rough gauge to see if it’s likely that you’ll reach your ideal pen spinning. It might be a nice idea to spin similar to DArKT, but will you really enjoy it enough to do it?

Understand your approach or mentality to pen spinning by knowing what motivates you, what interests you, and also think of ways to reach your ideal pen spinning.

Direction Questions

General

What kind of pen spinner do I want to be? (Goals)

Who are my favourite pen spinners? (Inspirations)

What things, that I enjoy, do I have to do in order to reach my ideal pen spinning? (Goals, Level of Interest)

What things, that I dislike, do I have to do in order to reach my ideal pen spinning? (Goals, Level of Interest)

What aspects of pen spinning do I value the most? (Aesthetic, technical, creative, etc.)

Tricks & Mod Choice

What kind of tricks/linkages do I like doing the most? (Trick Choice)

What kind of tricks/linkages do I have to use to become the pen spinner I want to be?

What pen mods do I like spinning the most? (Mod Choice)

What pen mods do I have to spin to become the pen spinner I want to be? (Mod Choice, Decision Making)

Competitive or non-competitive?

Do I like joining collaboration videos?

Do I like joining competitions?

Mentality

What do I enjoy in pen spinning? (Level of Interest)

What motivates me to continue spinning pens? (Motivation)

How much time and energy am I willing to invest into pen spinning? (Level of Interest)

What can I do to accomplish my goal of reaching my ideal pen spinning style? (Problem Solving)

How do I differentiate myself from other pen spinners? (Uniqueness, Problem Solving)

Want More Questions?

Try to think about any other topic about pen spinning that will affect your style in your videos!

I definitely left out a lot of specific concepts in pen spinning to keep things simple, but it’s worthwhile to think about more complicated topics if that will help you find your direction.

Direction Example

Let’s say a new pen spinner named “XxMenowaLoverxX” really wants to compete in the World Tournament, is very inspired by Menowa, but they don’t really enjoy doing all the same tricks that Menowa uses.

Since they’re very inspired by Menowa but they don’t enjoy learning most of his tricks, I would recommend finding tricks that they do enjoy, but also take inspirations from Menowa outside of his trick choices. Menowa’s style is not made up of only his tricks, but his execution, creativity, and many other style elements.

That way, they can be more unique by combining their style with some aspects of Menowa that XxMenowaLoverxX really loves.

Another way to personalize their style even more is by finding different inspirations other than Menowa. There’s a lot of pen spinners out there to watch and enjoy, so there’s no downside to getting familiar with more pen spinning videos!

Management

Managing your current style comes with its own set of challenges:

What do you do when…

1.  …you’re trying to decide whether to change your style or not?

2.  …you can’t decide whether to give up or keep trying to incorporate something into your style?

Evolving or Changing your Style

What do you do when... you’re trying to decide whether to change your style or not?

You might be pretty comfortable with what style you want to pursue, but after you’ve reached the style you wanted, it’s possible that you might feel like you need to shift gears. If that’s the case, here are some things to consider.

You’ll usually face one of these two situations:

1. Evolving your Style: You want to do something different with your current pen spinning, but still stick with most of the things you’ve practiced so far.

2. Changing your Style: You want to completely change your style of pen spinning to something else you don’t have as much expertise in.

1. Evolving your Style

The first situation is pretty straightforward. If you already want to keep pursuing the same style for the most part, but with some slight changes, you should go for it! You’re mostly practicing what you need to already, so spend some time experimenting and practicing what you decided to change. This is how every pen spinner evolves and improves.

For example, iroziro used to spin a slower and with less harshness than he does now. During the transition, he probably decided to practice and change the way he executes some of the tricks that he’s already familiar with.

A comparison between iroziro’s old and new style of pen spinning.

2. Changing your Style

The second situation is a little bit more complicated.

If you’re a completely new pen spinner trying to develop your style, then just go for it! You’re still new and you have time to experiment with pen spinning.

But if you’re a more experienced pen spinner with several years under your belt, you might want to think about it more seriously. If you completely abandon the style that you’ve practiced already and you choose a style that you’re not as experienced in, it’s going to take a lot of practice to get your spinning to a place that you’re satisfied with. So, the main question is, are you willing to put in the work?

There is no right or wrong answer here. It just depends on what you want. Do you have time to practice? Are you in college or do you have a job now? Do you enjoy pen spinning enough to grind through the major style change?

I’ve actually dealt with both situations and changed my style pretty drastically in the past. I switched from heavier mods to very light mods, and also started using tricks that weren’t always part of my old style. On top of trying to get used to light mods, I had to also work on execution in a way I’ve never done before. Am I happy with it? Considering where I am now, I am, yeah. But, was it a huge pain in the ass to relearn everything? Definitely.

Does This Trick Fit My Style? Can it?

What do you do when... you can’t decide whether to give up or keep trying to incorporate something into your style?

One of the consequences of having a specific style is that it can potentially make it harder for other tricks to be properly implemented into your combos.

But can it fit into your style? Sure! If you try hard enough, I’m sure you’d be able to.

However, if your style is very specific, like a Korean (PDS) style, you’ll have a hard time adding certain tricks to it. For example, if you add fishing to your Korean style spinning you can make it work, but it can also lead you to a different direction than the Korean style that you might have originally wanted.

The Korean (PDS) style is an old-school type of spinning that originated in the early 2000s, when Korean spinners began to link together tricks in a very smooth way that hadn’t been seen before at the time.

Fishing is a concept in pen spinning that came from devil stick juggling, but was popularized by Ian Jenson and Drowsy in the past few years.

Does this mean I can’t learn tricks that don’t fit my style?

Nope! You can still learn those tricks, but you don’t have to use them in your combos. Just do it for fun!

For example, Akai currently doesn’t use multiple spreads in his combos, but he practiced it to quite a high number. A lot of people find powertricks to be pretty fun to do on the side.

Powertricks were popularized by Spinnerpeem in 2009. Most powertricks are considered as Continuous Fingerless (FL) tricks.

Experience is Key

If you have extensive pen spinning experience, that intuitive understanding of pen spinning is the main way you will make stylistic decisions. From that, you can easily figure out when a trick doesn’t belong in your pen spinning or how it needs to be incorporated into your style.

For example, how did I know that fishing doesn’t fit in Korean style pen spinning? Well, after I watched lots of pen spinning videos over the years, I started to understand which tricks sort of belong in which styles. It’s mainly just time and experience that will help you make these stylistic decisions down the road.

As I mentioned before, I think it’s totally possible to use fishing in an old Korean style, but it will make the spinning look a lot more modern. Since fishing is a fairly new and popular concept, it doesn’t fit directly into the same realm as classic old-school spinning that the Koreans used to do.

Final Words

Style is such a weird topic to talk about in pen spinning because it’s hard to pinpoint exactly how it works. It’s probably really similar to art styles, or even a musician’s style. So, it probably makes sense that this article turned out to be mostly about the mentality behind pen spinning.

If you feel lost or confused by this article: Just know that the more pen spinning experience you get, the more you will fully grasp the ideas behind style. Keep those ideas at the back of your mind. Keep planning combos and filming them. Keep watching pen spinning videos!

Since style includes a lot of pen spinning elements, I kind of barely scratched the surface and I’m left a little bit unsatisfied. For that reason, I’m going to try to get two more articles written about more specific topics on aesthetics in pen spinning.

In the meantime, I really hope that this article helped you, or at least you found it interesting. Keep pen spinning, be nice to each other, and of course: have fun!

Special thanks to Akai, Fraction, and Tigres.

Other Helpful Links

Mod choice by coffeelucky https://coffeeluckyps.wordpress.com/2019/07/03/mod-choosing-guide-not-only-for-beginners/

Akai’s video on style from Japanese pen spinners (English subtitles, a lot of theory on combo structure) 

“Akai & Hobby Talks” Podcast on Mod Choice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L5txgwnLcs

Full image guide at the bottom of the article!

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

What pen spinning communities should I join?

If you’re only part of one of these communities, like the r/penspinning subreddit, I think it would be very helpful for you to join all the other ones to fully experience what each community has to offer.

Unfortunately, our English-speaking pen spinning community has been separated into a few different ones due to the popularity of Reddit, Discord, and the shutdown of the main pen spinning forum called UPSB (Universal Pen Spinning Board).

https://hobbylogics.tumblr.com/post/641434801425039360/a-brief-history-of-the-pen-spinning-community

This blog post gives you a bit of history of the English-speaking pen spinning community, and provides links to communities for you at the end of the article for you to check out!

If you speak English and you’re from a different country, scroll down to the bottom of the “megapost” for other communities: https://coffeeluckyps.wordpress.com/pen-spinning-mega-post/

Do I have to learn all of these things in this order?

Nope, you don’t have to learn in this order if you don’t want to. But in order to get better at pen spinning you’ll end up learning all of these things anyways.

Try not to get too frustrated and just have fun! Pushing yourself to improve at pen spinning isn’t fun for everyone, and some people like learning it to just casually spin pens.

What do some of these pen spinning terms mean?

If you don’t understand all of the terms, then that’s totally fine. Take it one step at a time and figure out what they mean as you accomplish each goal. If you’re completely new and want to know some basic terms, here’s a quick introduction to pen spinning: 

https://www.reddit.com/r/penspinning/comments/a4hc2p/new_spinners_click_here_v20/

Freestyle (FS) in pen spinning is being able to spin pens without planning anything, very similar to what freestyling in rap is like. 

Collaboration Videos (CV) are big montages with pen spinning combos.

Solo Videos (SV) are montages of pen spinning combos, but from only one spinner.

If you want to watch some CVs and SVs and get familiar with pen spinning media this blog post might help:

https://hobbylogics.tumblr.com/post/647667149683474432/getting-started-with-watching-pen-spinning-videos

What pen mods should I use? How do I get them?

If you’re just starting out, you should use whatever you have around. You can try pen spinning with just a pencil!

If you decided that you want to get into pen spinning, and you want to invest a bit of money into pen mods, then you should check out this written guide here: https://www.reddit.com/r/penspinning/comments/f0u969/pen_modification_faqs_v25/

Quick Tip: If you aren’t old enough to own a credit card to buy pen mods online, try looking for generic gift cards (e.g. VISA gift cards) at a store and use those to buy mods for yourself!

When does it mean that I’ve learned a trick?

If you’re just starting out, if you can land the trick 5-10 times in a row, then you should be pretty ready to move on.

Usually there isn’t a rule, it’s more about if you feel confident you learned it and you think you won’t mess the trick up as often.

Where are some pen spinning resources I can learn from?

https://coffeeluckyps.wordpress.com/pen-spinning-mega-post/

This blog post has a huge list of tutorials, articles, and even YouTube playlists of pen spinning for you to watch. 

Preface

I feel like beginners don't really have a good starting out point to get into watching pen spinning videos, especially because they are never found on the same website or underneath the same search tag. If you just type “pen spinning” into YouTube, you get a very different image of the hobby. It doesn’t represent pen spinning because the most popular videos will be at the top, and a large majority of pen spinning videos do not become viral on YouTube. I want to make it easier for beginners to understand pen spinning media and be able to find it more easily.

This article is for beginners to get an idea of pen spinning media and where to start watching.

Don’t feel like reading the entire article? Or you just want to skim it to get a general idea? Scroll down to the bottom of the article for links and resources for you to get started quickly!

Introduction

Watching pen spinning videos is a great way to learn from others, whether it is to learn more tricks or to take inspiration from a video editing style. For showing the most official and well-developed projects, there are three main types of pen spinning videos: collaboration videos (CVs), promotional videos (PVs), and solos (SVs).

Collaboration Videos

Collaboration videos, or “CVs” for short, are videos that involve multiple pen spinners. These videos are edited like a montage with different pen spinners. Organizers typically ask pen spinners for video submissions to be part of the collaboration. Filtering occurs when a video submission is rejected due to quality control.

Naming

Collaboration videos tend to have odd naming, sometimes they name it for the song they use in the video, other times to represent some sort of theme, or they use their own spinner name. They also use a naming scheme with numbers to represent which collaboration of the series it is. For example, Hobby 1st is the 1st collaboration and the next would be called Hobby 2nd. Typically, the time it takes for the next collaboration to be released in the series is one year.

A miscellaneous trend that also appeared in CVs is the use of “The First Player” which basically means the same thing as “The First Pen Spinner” or “The First Spinner”.

UPSB 1st is the 1st collaboration of the series. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHdacfxNtJo

Promotional Videos

Promotional videos, or “PVs” for short, are very similar to collaboration videos, but with one major difference: promotional videos are not organized the same way collaborations are. They are a way for a person to promote pen spinners they like. People choose their favourite pen spinning videos and edit them into an “unofficial” collaboration video.

There is one exception: videos like the Kuma Films pen spinning videos or “The Origin" Japanese video can be considered as PVs.

“The Origin” could be considered a promotional video, as well as a Kuma Films pen spinning video such as “Epic Pen Spinning” . Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPQUaEsfBcI

A pen spinning promotional video edited by Hobby. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqOZOEMYcuc

Pen Spinner Names

Pen spinner names can be thought as a screen name or in-game name (IGN) but for pen spinners. The names that pop up beside a pen spinning clip in CVs or PVs are online aliases of the pen spinners.

Solo Videos

Solo videos are montages, like a CV or a PV, but showcase the skill of a single pen spinner. They are usually edited by the pen spinner themselves to show as a bit of a milestone in their pen spinning “career”. Like a collaboration video, solos are usually released once per year to show the pen spinner’s progression. Hence, they are named by the number of years the pen spinner has been practicing or by the same number naming convention as CVs. For example, “Hobby 1 year solo” or “Hobby 1st solo”. Some solo videos also have guests, who are not the main pen spinner being showcased.

Unofficial solo videos are videos that are not made by the pen spinners in the video. Like a PV, it is meant to show off a pen spinner they appreciate.

i.suk 12 year solo Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O_N1XgnMRE

Mind Unofficial Solo edited by caca from JEB (JapEn Board). Reuploaded version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsmqVIsLT4o

Other types of videos

Gathering, tag, tutorial, and linkage videos also exist, but I didn’t mention them because I wanted to show a good jumping off point for newcomers to find more spinners to watch and be entertained by. These videos can be entertaining to watch, but CVs, PVs, and solos are usually the most “official” type of videos that are more accessible to watch than a casual 12 second pen spinning clip with little to no audio. Regardless, gathering and tag videos are fun to make with friends if you ever get the chance to do so!

As you become more experienced with pen spinning, you’ll find that in order to watch more pen spinning, you’ll need to go digging for individual pen spinning clips by specific pen spinners. For now, the main types of pen spinning videos mentioned in this article will be a great jumping off point until you become more familiar with the community.

SoCal Summer Gathering in 2014. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a69ejrqZUy4 Playlist of SoCal Gatherings: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1nLzSpcmNVHfUhcRW89GBvZTb4-x98Og

Media Platforms

YouTube is currently the main platform for watching CVs, PVs, and solos because of the site’s dominance over other video hosting websites.

Twitter is currently the main social media used by most pen spinners around the world. However, most people use it like a social media platform, so generally single pen spinning clips are posted there rather than big CVs or solos. Despite this, Twitter is still a very good place to share clips, ideas, and even CV submissions!

If you decide to use Twitter, I would highly recommend using or trying out TweetDeck.

TweetDeck: https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/

Very helpful for organizing your timeline when you follow multiple people. Twitter can be overwhelming to navigate when there’s a lot of people posting things all at once.

Getting Started

You’ll also often find that pen spinners will make their own YouTube channel or Twitter account dedicated to their own pen spinning. PVs and CVs can also lead you to search for a pen spinner’s name on YouTube for solos and their YouTube channels, making them a great way for you to find pen spinners you like watching.

If you’d like a quick introduction into pen spinning videos, here are some resources for you to browse:

“Mega CV Playlist” by CoffeeLucky https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE4F7122D79474299

“Huge playlist of pen spinning”, linked on the sidebar of r/penspinning https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLekN8SE60W5GgDxbcQh0XIVfDnyUS6bpj

“Pen Spinning Calendar” by CoffeeLucky (This Twitter account lists many of the recent CVs being organized and published) https://twitter.com/PS_Calendar

While these resources are a quick and dirty introduction to pen spinning, they will not always show everything the hobby has to offer. The best way to keep up with pen spinning current events is by joining a community.

Join “The Workshop” Discord server here: https://discord.gg/7F4BjWD

Final Words

Hopefully this article helped you get an overall idea of pen spinning videos and I look forward to seeing you in the community!

I know that pen spinning is very niche and small compared to some of the other major “skilltoy” hobbies out there like speedcubing or juggling, but I hope you have fun in the hobby like many other people and myself.

Other Helpful Links

CoffeeLucky’s “Pen Spinning Mega Post”, includes a long list of pen spinning resources from different people. https://coffeeluckyps.wordpress.com/pen-spinning-mega-post/

On April Fools Day 2020, I flipped The Workshop’s Discord server icon and server name upside down. I actually didn’t even tell my staff team about it when I did it, and they started to flip their profile pictures upside down and their names upside down. This year, I decided to do something different.

On April 1st, 2021:

I changed The Workshop’s Discord server icon to a duck.

I changed the server name to: “QUOK: The Wanderer’s Workshop”.

I added an emote called “QUOK”.

I changed the role names to:

The Wanderers (Administrators)

The Dreamers (Moderators)

The Builders (Bots)

The Woken (Member, Orange)

The Awaken (Member, Pink)

I added a bunch of nonsense Lovecraftian text about QUOK in the #server-updates channel.

“QUOK”, The Lovecraftian Duck

QUOK is a duck with more than two eyes and a rat tail. The duck is also commonly associated with a church hat. You can recognize QUOK pretty easily by the eye inside of its beak.

One of the first sketches of QUOK.

Origins

The original sketch of QUOK was drawn by Pat Hughes, Senior Artist at Squishable (a stuffed toy company), on an official Squishable livestream. Pat usually draws promotional art or Squishable designs, but occasionally he would draw weird things for fun and QUOK was one of the them.

The weird sketches became inside jokes in the Squishable livestream chat, and everyone (including Pat) generally associated some of the jokes with H.P. Lovecraft. The Lovecraftian-inspired jokes in the community eventually created a joke that the Squishable fan base is a cult. QUOK was later used as an emote in the community as well.

One of the fans of the stream, “Thrillhouse”, created a “Squishable Lore Wiki” to document the inside jokes about Squishable.

Thrillhouse was the person who added the QUOK page on the Wiki, and I edited his writing to fit the vibe I wanted for the joke in the Discord server.

Why I Worship QUOK

If you weren’t aware, I collect plush toys. Squishable was a cool company that I found while looking for some cute designs. Nowadays, I try not to buy more plush toys unless a really cool design shows up because I’m kinda reaching the point where I don’t have that much space at home.

I’m a fan of the company, and the people I met during the Squishable livestreams were very friendly. That made it easy for me to learn about all the inside jokes in their community, and I actually even wrote a page on Thrillhouse’s Lore Wiki on my spare time.

My profile picture on Tumblr, of a plush cat holding a metal comssa, is actually the first stuffed animal I bought from Squishable. This is the 15″ Siamese Cat Squishable (https://www.squishable.com/...).

  Credits and Sources

Original QUOK’s by Pat Hughes, Senior Artist at Squishable: http://patdraws.com

Quokfka drawn by Jaylynne Ramos, Project Open Squish Designer: https://www.squishable.com/member/JayRamos

Lore Wiki and QUOK page by “Thrillhouse”: https://squishablelore.fandom.com/wiki/Category:All_Pages https://squishablelore.fandom.com/wiki/QUOK

It's important to have fun. 

Download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BMUcOCYREwgtFA...​ Artist: Bruno Mars Song: Treasure Album: Unorthodox Jukebox

Intention

Compared to the “Skin and Bones” PV I made, this promo had a very different intention. In my previous blog post talking about the “Skin and Bones” PV, I mentioned how important it is to show the pen spinning over having lots of fun editing and effects. The intention of “Treasure” is actually very opposite from that philosophy I talked about before. “Treasure” was more about editing to the flow of the music rather than showing pen spinning purely on it’s own.

After making more serious PVs and SVs in the past, like Project Adrift, I thought it was time to make a PV that’s much more lighthearted and fun. Mr. Wikipedia’s “U Can't Touch Pen” has such a fun vibe to it, and I thought it was important to revisit those feelings in my “Treasure” PV.

I think it’s pretty easy sometimes to lose sight of why you enjoy pen spinning when you’re busy trying to improve and submit to CVs or competitions. My ultimate goal was to hopefully put a smile on people’s faces and remind them to have fun with the hobby.

Extras

I’ve always been very inspired by Mr. Wikipedia’s PVs, and “Treasure” was meant to be similar to Mr. Wikipedia’s editing style. His videos using English vocals are some of my favourite, because of his music choice with popular songs.

MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” is an old song for sure, but also a classic. This PV has nice humour in it.

No Editing Section???

Pen spinning is complicated and it can be really helpful to break it down into concepts like notation, speed, difficulty, and so on. Using these concepts, we can try to understand how they work together to make an overall effect.

Which “Part”?

Learning concepts in pen spinning are really helpful. Things like notation, difficulty, and execution. Concepts help us understand pen spinning by expressing them into smaller, and easy-to-follow chunks.

Except, all of these parts are seen together, not one at a time. You can’t watch pen spinning separately by extracting the difficulty from the spinning in the same way that a video can be experienced separately in audio and video. The only way to watch pen spinning is by watching every part together. Unless, of course, we try really hard to focus on analyzing one particular thing in a pen spinning video.

In the big scheme of things, each concept we come up with to describe something about pen spinning only slightly affects the performance because there’s a too many things that make up that final performance.

Greater than the Sum of its Parts

The relationship between all pen spinning elements ultimately creates an overall effect or feeling. The feeling that a pen spinner creates makes us use different words like “ugly” or “pretty”. This overall effect or feeling is something that can’t be described by the final numbered scores in a World Tournament, because we need to read the judges’ comments to really know how they feel.

Often times, the overall effect of a pen spinner is something that we can’t even put into words, it’s only something we feel when we watch it. The reason why we feel a certain way is more about how certain elements in pen spinning work together to contribute to that final feeling.

Creating an Effect

Let me use an example with style elements to help explain effects.

Mesi’s combo for “All Highlight Promo” has a harshness to the finisher (0:11/mm:ss) that is very eye-catching to me.

I’m also aware that the final catch with his thumb looks a bit misplaced, but considering the era and the confidence of this combo it doesn’t bother me too much.

Personally, I’ve always thought the way Mesi does Scissor Spin to FL TA is one of the best. And there’s a reason for why it feels that way to me.

I looked into some of Mesi’s other clips, and it isn’t one particular thing he does that creates that harsh effect in his finisher. Instead, there’s a lot of different things that are happening that help contribute to this feeling in his “All Highlight Promo” finisher:

The speed of the pen is not consistent during the finisher.

Scissor Spin to FL TA is typically a linkage that will always slow down during the Scissor Spin, and the ThumbAround is usually executed a lot faster. This gives a feeling of a slower build-up to the final payoff. A slower Scissor Spin that builds up to the final ThumbAround.

The pen shakes from the force of the ThumbAround, even as he holds on to the pen.

The arm and wrist movement during the FL TA moves his hand upwards, as if exaggerating the final trick to give it more impact.

Whether this was intentional by Mesi or not, it tells us that an intuitive understanding of how to influence the final effect can help you accomplish it.

Side Note: I used the word effect in this section of the article even though I talked about overall effect. This is because the overall effect is more about the general feeling, and the effect that Mesi created in this example is more about the finisher than the entire combo.

Final Words

Pen spinning is not just about the elements that it is composed of, such as execution, but it is about how everything fits together. How these elements interact and support each other is why pen spinners might feel “powerful” or “elegant”. It can be a good idea to improve your creativity or your presentation, but sometimes it can be more useful to remind yourself what your original goals were.

“Ideas:” is part of a series I mentioned in a previous blog post where share some of the ideas I have about pen spinning. Unlike some of my other articles, this one was not written with the goal to teach. Instead, it’s my way of sharing some of my own personal discoveries as I keep learning and practicing pen spinning. Hopefully I explained my ideas well enough for you guys to follow!

Extras

This video explains an idea about how our physical laws never cause anything, they only help describe it. Very helpful for me in order to find the right words to explain my ideas in this article.

Introduction

To a completely new pen spinner, the constant changes in the English-speaking pen spinning community might seem complicated and overwhelming.

With a bit of personal experience during the time of UPSB (Universal Pen Spinning Board, a forum) shutting down and some help from RPD's history research, hopefully I can help clarify some questions that new (and possibly older!) English-speaking pen spinners might have.

The Beginning

The very first appearance of pen spinning is extremely hard to say, because it is not well documented, but the history of pen spinning on the internet is a little more accessible.

In the early 2000s and late 1990s, pen spinning blog websites began to appear on the internet. Hideaki Kondoh’s blog, Kam’s (Fernando Kuo) Pentrix website, and David Weis’ blog were some of the more notable websites during that time. Blog websites were the main source of pen spinning information and content until communities began to form.

In 2004, Kam created the first English-speaking pen spinning forum called Universal Pen Spinning Board, or UPSB for short. For about 14 years, UPSB was the main pen spinning community for many people living in North America.

A screenshot of UPSB v3, archived by Wayback Machine. Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20090804004258/http://www.upsb.info/forum/

The Shutdown

Through the years, Universal Pen Spinning Board was forced to close down multiple times for different issues and a new version of the forum would reopen each time. UPSB eventually reached its fifth version in 2014, UPSB v5, which would be the last official English-speaking forum in the international pen spinning community.

In this case, UPSB v5 was shut down due to financial reasons. Kam, the original creator of the forum, stopped paying the website costs likely because of the high costs and the family he was starting with his wife. Zombo (a UPSB administrator), decided to step up and continue funding UPSB for a time until there was a better solution found. Unfortunately, this did not last because the UPSB staff were not able to find a solution and act on it, so Zombo stopped paying for the website costs completely and UPSB was finally laid to rest.

Zkhan (UPSB administrator) announces the shutdown of UPSB on their Facebook page.

Present Day

However, the end of UPSB did not mean the end for the English-speaking pen spinning community because many smaller communities began to form on different platforms. New and old pen spinners began to migrate to Reddit, Twitter, Instagram and Discord.

Discord Communities

Mango's Pen Spinning Discord Server

Mango is a pen spinner from UPSB who created his Discord server while UPSB v5 was still active. The Discord server originally started as more of a casual friend group, but quickly became the alternative once UPSB was shut down.

Join the Discord server: https://discord.gg/347xyYa

r/penspinning and Discord Server

The r/penspinning community on Reddit was originally created in 2010 by a pen spinner from UPSB called Anderfreeb. Later, the management powers were given to other UPSB members such as: Miyat, King, Iota, Eriror and many others.

Currently, Letho72 is the main moderator of the subreddit and he has recruited new moderators to the subreddit and their Discord server.

r/penspinning and their Discord server became another community for pen spinners to participate in.

Join the Discord server: https://discord.gg/010bWcQCla9sRdYea Join the Reddit community: https://www.reddit.com/r/penspinning/

The Workshop Discord Server

The Workshop Discord server was created in December 2018, but fully released to the public in early 2019. 

Hobby, a former UPSB moderator, created the pen spinning Discord server with the goal of making it more focused on learning and improvement. The Discord server started as a small pen spinning help community, but later became the main English-speaking community for international pen spinners.

Join the Discord server: https://discord.gg/7F4BjWD

Social Media Platforms

Twitter and Instagram

Initially, Twitter was used by some Japanese pen spinners and other spinners living in various countries but the platform is now very commonly used by pen spinners around the world. It is also possible that the end of Vine caused more people to use Twitter instead.

If you decide to use Twitter, I would highly recommend using (or at least trying) TweetDeck: https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ 

Instagram is still used by pen spinners since it gained popularity as a commonly-used social media platform in general.

YouTube

For many years, YouTube has consistently been the main media platform for viewing pen spinning content.

Although casual pen spinning videos are usually posted on other platforms nowadays, YouTube remains as the main source for bigger video projects as well as a place for individuals to display their official pen spinning clips.

Other Social Media Platforms

Many other social media platforms such as Facebook or TikTok are still used for pen spinning. However, the most popular platforms for English-speaking pen spinners are the ones listed above.

Final Words

This article was a draft on my Tumblr dashboard for at least a year before I finally decided to finish it. This year, I think I’m going to try to finally finish the articles that I only started to write.

Of course, if there’s any errors in this article, feel free to contact me and let me know.

General:

Coffeelucky - this guy does so much work, thank you so much 👏

iColor - for being cool and creating spin-archive.org

RPD - enjoyable to talk to, made PS History/Notation Textbook

Tigres - always nice to catch up with you again and talk about PS

Pixels - cool dude from back in the day, makes CVs and still spins

Ch/Chobi - nice guy, glad to see him finding a direction in his PS

JV2 - friendly and hungry to learn and improve

Noishi - really good, I want to watch more videos and maybe a solo

Nare/Alvaris - friendly oldie, cool style with arm movement

Timeless - older MX spinner that I want to see more of

Mr. Wikipedia - publicly released PDS videos, continues to make PVs/SVs

Shakziip - unique style, makes cool CVs

Airi - discovered his subtleties this year

Kudo - insane charge refinement

Arys - stays true to PDS MX spinning while having modern refinement

Beat Red - imitates PDS spinning extremely well

Akai - #AHT

Baaron - lol

Monk/Kevlar - brandonheadass

Stormpegy - is a cat and is a nerd

New Discoveries, Old Spinners:

Sangkm - really nice neobak to 34 and cool overall rhythm

Two Tempers Man - smooth with weis baks like butter

Agut - 2gud

Awawa - so much weight in arounds and baks, very nice sequences

Ryo - such stable spinning for the time, very nice arounds

Lost - clean finger positioning and refined spinning

Esora - didn’t realize how good he was until now

Most Potential:

Pohng - great moderator, lots of potential for his spinning

Introduction

I’ve noticed that a lot of people might like watching a pen spinner, but they tend to not question why they like it in the first place. Personally, it took me years of watching and thinking about pen spinning before I began to develop my own reasoning behind what’s good or bad. The reasoning helped me broaden my perspective and more deeply understand how to improve my own pen spinning.

Pen spinning is complex and is mostly digested in a very short amount of time. If you blink, a moment could be missed. Instead of clicking away from a video after you get a very general impression, it’s helpful if you can analyze and break apart what the spinner took the time to create. This article will hopefully give you a head-start to learn what is good or bad pen spinning and understand your own personal preferences as well.

  Requirements

In order to analyze pen spinning effectively, a good foundation of knowledge about pen spinning will help guide the process. Understanding the basic elements of pen spinning will help give newer spinners a jumping-off point to analyze further.

If you are a newer spinner that is unfamiliar with these elements, you can start now, but I’d recommend avoiding this article. You need to understand the basics of what is objectively good or bad, otherwise you might confuse yourself by accidentally developing your own reasoning that may not be commonly accepted in the community.

 Some basic elements:

Execution

Difficulty

Presentation

Style

Combo Structure

…and more!

  Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is a great way to approach and analyze things rationally to form ideas, opinions, and theories with solid reasoning.

“In essence, critical thinking requires you to use your ability to reason. It is about being an active learner rather than a passive recipient of information.”

Read more at: https://www.skillsyouneed.com/learn/critical-thinking.html

The first google search result I found. I recommend to do a quick Google search on this topic because it is widely known and might be explained a lot better in other articles on the internet, although it will not be in a pen spinning context.

The concept of critical thinking is a bit difficult to explain in vague terms such as “logic” and “reasoning”, so there will be a simple exercise for you to try below. When I have more time to proofread and edit, I’ll post a separate article on my blog going through this exercise myself.

  Getting Started with Critical Thinking: Asking, “Why?”

Questioning yourself and others will lead to a better opinion or conclusion. Asking why someone might think a pen spinner is really good can make you appreciate aspects of the pen spinner you haven’t considered yet. Developing solid reasoning makes the resulting conclusions and opinions more valuable.

For example, it’s easy to say your favourite music is the best music in the world, but what makes it good? Are there certain parts of the song that builds suspense in a way that you like? Did the design behind the suspense-building section use the sounds in an effective way? How did they make it that effective? Why is it effective?

By asking questions to dig deeper beneath the surface, you can start to come up with reasons for your personal preferences and also reasons why other people value certain aspects more.

Keep in mind that I’m not trying to teach you to be a judge for world pen spinning competitions. The main objective of this article is to try to get you to think more deeply about pen spinning and develop your own well-reasoned opinions and theories that will possibly help you improve your own pen spinning in the future.

   Critical Thinking Exercise: Choosing a Candidate

Before we dig into some big questions, it’s important to choose a good candidate for this exercise.

 Get started (Recommended):

Find a well-known or well-appreciated pen spinner that you enjoy watching.

Look for 1 or 2 videos of the pen spinner. (Preferably videos you like.)

Find specific moments (linkages, tricks, etc.) in the video(s) that you enjoy in particular.

Find the specific timestamp (mm:ss) in the video(s) for when the moments occur.

Done? Now you’re prepared for the next part, which is thinking through some questions.

Critical Thinking Exercise: Questions to Think about

What feelings or general impressions do you get when first watching the spinner? Why? 

What do you think is good or bad about this spinner? Why?

Which specific moments do you like or dislike about the spinner? Why?

What do people think is good or bad about this spinner? Why?

Which specific moments do other people like or dislike about the spinner? Why?

It’s important to know that these questions are not the only questions you should ask yourself when you try to logically analyze something. I purposely wrote a few simple questions as a jumping-off point rather than a comprehensive guide. Remember to come up with different ways to question and analyze something in the way that works best for you!

Final Words

Thinking critically is a skill that will improve your mindset when judging pen spinning, but also help you assess other topics in a logical way. The value of analyzing the intent and skill of pen spinners is not to have a goal to like their spinning, but to try to understand their unique skillset to broaden your perspective and, ultimately, apply to your own pen spinning.

Download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DJq0...

Song: Skin and Bones  Artist: Cage The Elephant 

Why the video was made

I haven’t been sleeping at proper times lately. When I can’t sleep and I get bored, I’ll get out of bed and find something to do. This time, it just so happened to be editing a new pen spinning PV. (And this time, it just so happened to be writing this blog post.)

I found the song when I was just relaxing in bed browsing through music on Spotify, and came across a song that was recommended to me. I’ve heard of this band before, but from someone mentioning it to me one time.

I previously ignored the band mostly because I usually don’t like lyrics in songs, but I gave it a listen and realized how well it could fit pen spinning.

I think that might be a curse that all editors have: always subconsciously searching for music that fits pen spinning.

Editing

I feel like most PVs should be edited this way. Not in edited way I do, but with this philosophy in mind: Make quick and simple PVs from music and pen spinners that inspire you.

I didn’t spend that much time editing this compared to other PVs, I made this in about 4-5 hours in one day. I don’t think it matters that it feels like it has less effort put in than the Stricken PV. It’s not about fancy editing, but about being able to share your inspirations with other people.

That means you don’t need to know how to do complicated effects. Fancy effects just take you away from the pen spinning itself. Choose good music and edit with a few simple transitions that fit, and that’s all you need.

To be clear, there is a time and place for all types of editing. Whether it’s a very well-edited PV at a JapEn CV level, or a simple crossfade edit by an enthusiastic spinner. There’s nothing wrong with the different editing styles, but the fact that you can edit a quick PV or SV in a day to share your inspirations really nails the point of why people make PVs in the first place: sharing and enjoying pen spinning.

Final Words

Anyways, I hope I didn’t get too preachy on you guys. Make sure you don’t immediately agree with me because I’m clearly biased from the pen spinning edits I like to watch - they’re just some of my thoughts.

Hope you enjoyed watching/reading, and just have fun with pen spinning 8)

Extras

An example of simple editing that shows pen spinning as it is.

A PV that uses more effects than Spin + mp3, but still uses pretty simple transitions and standard editing tricks to fit the music.