Please Tell Me All About Your Tattoos and How You Got Them

It’s Friday! Let’s talk tattoos. Do you have a geeky sigil of pride, an artful drawing, a favorite lyric inscribed on your body? Or are you like me, tattoo-free and confused? Do you hate tattoos? We need to chat.

Pull up a squashy armchair, Mary Suevians, because I want to hear about you and your ink (or lack thereof). Personally, I’m kind of obsessed with tattoos, but I’m also plagued by indecision. I can never seem to settle on a design or creature or superhero symbol or phrase for long enough to get it permanently marked on my skin (also they can be mad expensive).

Every time I’ve come close (recent brief flirtatations were some kind of ancient Greek ship or a grandfather clock), I end up in a spiral about the other parts of the process: black and white or with color? What size? Which artist? And perhaps most importantly, where?

My tattoo-dappled friends—of which I seem to have many—assure me that the upper arms and thighs are the least painful spots. I’m not afraid of the pain part exactly, but if I end up actually getting my first tattoo I probably shouldn’t do it in a place that’s supposed to hurt quite a lot, like the top of the foot, right? And while we’ve come a long way from the days when a visible tattoo might get in the way of getting a job or an apartment, I still like the idea of being able to cover it at will.

So, my friend’s rad Cap’s shield, which is on his wrist, is probably not for me. I do, however, love the concept of paying homage to a lifetime of devoted geekery with some kind of fannish ink. Another friend has Loki’s crown on her forearm, and recently I saw a Twitter thread about Lord of the Rings tattoos—quite a few people have Sting the magical dagger, the Misty Mountain range, or all kinds of Elvish inscriptions in that distinctive script.

Talk to me about tattoos. Do you have them, do you want them, are you bare-skinned like me? If you have one you’d like to share with the class, upload a pic to a site like imgur and give us a link. Please do not send us to look at non-tattooed related imagery or anything crass or I will be sad and ban you. We’re throwing a tattoo party here, people.

Here’s one I approve of deeply, inspired by Teresa’s reminder that Hamilton is full of tattooable quotes:

What’ve you got?

(image: Shutterstock)

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