Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Marilyn Darling Show—today I’m doing a quick-but-thorough ink review of Dominant Industry Earl Grey Tea (and yes, I literally got home and jumped right into it). This ink reads as a deep orange in real life—darker than what the camera wants to show—with some nice shading when I write fast. It’s really pretty, but I also talk candidly about the price: 25 ml for $17 is… Jesus Christ on a bike. That cost alone bumped it off my “maybe” list, because I can get way more ink for the money elsewhere. I run it through my usual tests: a water resistance swipe (it has a little, but the darker parts wash out and it gets smoochy), plus toilet paper chromatography with water and rubbing alcohol. Mostly it’s “all orange,” but I do see multiple orange tones—dark orange, peachy orange, and a peach note that’s actually pretty cool. Then I go paper-by-paper, calling out feathering, bleeding, and ghosting across everything from Walmart Pen+Gear and Rhodia to Tomoe River and Archer & Olive. Some papers look beautiful, and some absolutely do not (Maruman Mnemosyne was the worst for bleed). I wrap with a comparison panel against other oranges and note a weird tiny sheen hiding in the letters.