+1 for Zebra Sarasa. (I was excited to see it mentioned as well.) I'm a fan of them (for 15+ years) since someone I knew who owned an office supply store introduced them to me. They look a lot like G2's but if you look closely at a G2 you see a brown smear of color at the top of the refill which Sarasa doesn't have.

However, I cross out things often (to do lists), and sometimes draw a line across the page (as a divider), and if you do that, you will get a big blog of ink on the next letter you write. Another issue I've had is that some batches I've gotten were unreliable.

I recently got into fountain pens (which I thought this article would mention; figuring out refills was confusing for me at first). I have a cheap one (as far as fountain pens go, $18 but it's refillable (Sheaffer VFM)) and it's really great: no more blob issues at all.

yah, blobs seem to be an issue with many ink pens, gel or otherwise. when i need to draw lines, i usually pull out a tissue or napkin to dab off the extra ink after each line.

You might wanna try out Pilot Vpen [1] - its a disposable fountain pen available in a couple of colour options. I've been using them for 3 years now without issues, and no blobs form (generally, unless the paper was a tissue paper or smth)

[1] https://www.jetpens.com/Pilot-Vpen-Disposable-Fountain-Pen-B...

Have you tried the Pilot 78G? It's a quite reliable and yet cheap fountain pen: https://www.penaddict.com/blog/2013/11/27/pilot-78g-fountain...

Are the 78Gs still manufactured, or have they been replaced with the Metropolitan? I haven't directly compared the 78G with Metropolitan, but I've been disappointed with how wide my Metro writes despite having a fine nib.

You got it backwards. The linked article says that the Zebra Sarasa is a “Pilot-style G2” refill, not “Parker-style”.