It’s Real
Okay, yes. This is a real tattoo that’s on my fleshy, human Earth body until I die. And I did, in fact, give it to myself.
Even though it’s small, this piece requires a lot of explanation on my part, which is completely counterintuitive to how I want to wear this tattoo. It’s currently living under a watch most of the time for the specific purpose of not having to explain it to old ladies at the grocery store or whatever. You know Marsha’s all about that hot tattoo goss.
But unfortunately, tattoos and the people that get them still have a nefarious cloud of stigma around them that I would like to distance myself from. Actually, the tattoo collector/artist community has its own fog of expectations and practices surrounding it that I would also like to distance myself from, especially since I’ve given one to myself. So, in classic fashion, I’ve written a small novel about it — partly to clear the air and, if I’m honest, partly to process what I’ve just done.
As a Plumber Once Said, Here We Go
The symbols on my wrist are the Dovahzul (a fictional Skyrim language) characters for “ro.” Do they look good and neat close up? No, they absolutely do not look like professional quality work and I’ll be the first to admit it. Do they look like what they should from a normal looking distance and not right up in someone’s face? Yes, I think so. That’s just how it’s going to be until I can touch it up, if I want to.
And we are indeed talking about “ro” as in Fus Ro Dah — the Unrelenting Force shout. I will say that “ro” means “balance.” I will also say that this is a reference to the podcast The Adventure Zone, specifically the Balance story arc, and not just some word I carved into myself forever. If I turned myself into just some white girl walking around the world with the word “balance” on her wrist in earnest, just to remember the word “balance,” I think I would drop dead.
Disclaimers With a Slight Side of Sass
I did this because it’s a very important personal reminder to myself, from myself (which I’ll spare you the details of since it has nothing to do with this site or gaming). Not every tattoo has to have a deep, personal meaning behind it, or even an explanation. This is just how I wanted to do it for myself. And not every person with a tattoo is ready to give you their reason for getting one, including myself. Maybe I’ll just send folks this article if anyone asks and I don’t have the energy.
Please, if anyone reading this is thinking of going after me for 1) getting a tattoo, 2) giving myself a tattoo, 3) having a “basic” text tattoo, 4) having a “pop culture” or “geeky” tattoo, 5) having a stereotypical first tattoo with extreme personal meaning and “no plans” for more tattoos in the future, or 6) any other reason, just do me the small kindness of reading the article beforehand? You don’t know me, I don’t know you, this thing is on me forever, and frankly, I (mostly) don’t care what you think about it. You clicked on this article to find out what I have to say about this and if at any point you find it tiring, you have the entirety of the internet to explore.
Might I recommend an animation for you instead? This one is spectacular and the song that goes with it is a jam and a half.
How I Went About It
To start the process, I thought about whether or not I’d ever want a tattoo for years, and researched the tattoo industry and the art/techniques of tattooing — especially stick and poke tattooing — for months. So if you think I did this just for Inktober, you’re crazier than I am. It was just a Venn diagram situation of “Inktober 2018” and “I think it’s tattoo time.”
I also want to clarify that I did this legally. Right now in Nova Scotia, there are technically laws on the books in the form of the Safe Body Art Act, unenforceable until February 2019. The province of Nova Scotia requires a licence or permit for haircutting, but not for tattooing, and I didn’t want to end up with an infection. I took matters into my own hands for my own safety and as part of the meaning of the piece itself.
Always do your research on tattoos before getting one. Think about your artist, your safety, your design, your local laws, your aftercare, your tattoo’s longevity in terms of fading — everything.
Timing and Design
Once my research plateaued, I waited for what felt like the right time in my life to do it. Which happened to be several months after my little sister got one while traveling alone in India on her 18th birthday, so I knew I wouldn’t be the sibling to break the tattoo ice in the family, nor would I be doing it in the most outlandish way. I had a good idea of what I wanted, so I drew out loads of possible designs, redrew some of them in thin point Sharpie to see how they looked on my wrist, and finally settled on this design.
No joke — I drew so many characters in Dovahzul I can now recognize other people’s tattoos that have misspelled the Dovahzul characters for “dovahkiin” (meaning “dragonborn”) by using two “i” characters in a row instead of the single character that’s actually used for that “ii” sound, or two characters for the single “ah” character.
An Aside About Text Tattoos and Art
My tattoo is technically a text tattoo, which I didn’t really want initially because I don’t like how explicit many text tattoos are in their meaning. Tattooing is (or can be to the right artists) a very legitimate and ancient art form with styles and communities all its own. A pretty common type of tattoo today is the text tattoo, which can show up in single word form or in full quotations. I like the sentiment of wanting text as a permanent keepsake, but I often dislike the aesthetic and certain instances of them, at least for myself.
In my mind, (some) really great artwork communicates extremely complex ideas and/or narratives to people without any further explanation other than the art itself. Ideally, viewers of the work can experience the piece and take away more than just a technical description of the work and its composition (visual arts or otherwise). That’s why people say a picture is worth a thousand words, and also exactly why video games deserve to be counted as a form of art.
This task is much more easily accomplished when the target audience of what you want to communicate is only yourself, as it was for my tattoo. My tattoo is not great artwork because to most people, it communicates that I’m way into Monster energy drinks (which I’m not), or that I’m way into Skyrim (which I am). But that’s not even remotely all of the meaning this tattoo communicates to me, and that’s exactly how I designed it.
Getting text tattoos of a single word written in any language may communicate much, much more than just the single word to the owner of that tattoo and I don’t want to discount that. I do want to make it clear that in the larger sense of tattoos as a form of art, text tattoos where the meaning can be summarized in a single word do not appeal to me in the least and that’s exactly what I’ve tried to avoid.
Please don’t read this article and assume tattooing is easily accomplished by simply copying words onto people. Oftentimes artists get commissioned to make whatever their clients want done, and sometimes people just want words. Many highly skilled tattoo artists consider themselves fine artists, like painters, with renown in the industry and collectors who seek them out for their talents. Some even specialize in lettering and can give really beautiful, intricate tattoos in their preferred style without copying a word in Helvetica because the client only wanted that. The last thing I want to do is take away the skill of tattoo artists because I did a weird, personal thing on my own and then wrote about it on the internet.
Tattooing Myself
After I chose the design, I used professional grade single-needle tattoo needles to practice my technique on a slab of synthetic skin to get acclimated to the medium. Fun tip — don’t practice on citrus fruits because you can get slabs of practice skin cheaper, it more accurately mimics the way the ink gets deposited into the skin, and they’re reusable. Trust me, I’ve tried both. Just make sure the practice skin matches the skin tone you’ll be tattooing so you know the colors will work how you want them to.
Please take everything I’m about to say as ONLY a recap of what I did and NOT inspiration or instruction for a tattoo of your own.
Importantly, when I felt I was ready to actually complete the tattoo, I sterilized the entire work area and tools I would be using and put on medical grade disposable gloves. I redrew the design once more onto transfer paper and applied it to the tattoo site on my wrist, freshly cleaned. Unfortunately, this stencil did not stay on quite right and I essentially free handed the design. I poured some tattoo ink (not India or calligraphy ink because I wanted to do it right) out of the bottle and into a small container so I could double dip the needle without contaminating the whole bottle of ink.
FOR REAL, DO NOT DO THIS WITHOUT FURTHER READING AND THE RIGHT TOOLS.
Coming down to it, I used an individually packaged, sterile, professional grade 3RL ‘single-needle’ tattooing needle dipped in black tattoo ink to poke and deposit ink into the shape of the design in my skin. As I went, I used a clean disposable cloth dampened with witch hazel to wipe away excess ink and any blood away from the tattoo site. I filled in the lines I made with a 5RL needle and went over the design multiple times with this needle to darken it.
How It Felt
In terms of pain, it was definitely less than comfortable, but not so painful that it impacted my ability to have it done to me or to continue doing it to myself. It was not a shock to me that stabbing myself with a very tiny knife stick in the same place over and over again did, in fact, hurt somewhat. Pain isn’t fun. But I can tolerate it alright, so receiving the tattoo was probably the easiest part of this whole thing.
What It Felt Like to Do It
Speaking not as the recipient of a stick and poke tattoo, but as the artist giving one, my experience was totally different and so much more uncomfortable for me. Tattooing is completely unlike any medium I have ever encountered, and I don’t think anything could have prepared me for it, even the practice skin. I don’t know if I can describe the feeling of doing this tattoo accurately without getting too graphic, especially because stick and poke tattoos are by nature much more intimate and drawn out than tattoos done with a machine.
There was something profoundly upsetting for me in creating something by actively causing harm to part of a living thing. Imagine filling in a paint-by-number picture but instead of dragging a colored pencil across a page in sweeping strokes, you could only place dots in one by one. Imagine how long that would take, even for a small design, and how focused you’d have to be to get an even, bright color with layers and layers of dots.
Now imagine the paper was a living thing and in order to get your dots to show up, you had to puncture it — to injure it — with your pencil. Picture the paper as being slightly warm to the touch, full of life and ready to move at a moment’s notice. Now picture stabbing it hundreds of times to make your drawing, and every time you do, you feel your pencil break the paper’s skin. You hear your pencil break its skin. You feel its skin stretch out as it grips the place where you stabbed it when you go to remove your pencil. Every. Single. Time.
Quite simply — it felt disgusting. And I couldn’t hold back the number of times I had to poke because I had to make sure the piece looked good. The sight of blood, needles, and pain I can handle. But the actual feeling of poking a needle into something alive repeatedly in order to create a simple drawing was horrible. A friend of mine was interested in having me do one for her, but I don’t know if I could ever feel comfortable doing this to another person. I don’t even think I would do it to myself again. Whether it be myself or a pro, I’d have it done with a machine for sure.
I have absolutely no regrets about this experience and I’m so happy at how everything turned out. Doing this tattoo myself as a stick and poke actually really adds to the meaning of the piece for me. But I would be remiss to neglect mentioning this particular part of the experience. To be perfectly blunt, it was pretty fucked up. Doing it was so much worse than having it done.
Healing And Aftercare
When the design was done, I cleaned off my skin once more, applied a tattoo cream to the area, and wrapped the tattoo up with a bandage to reduce its exposure to air since it was essentially a fresh wound at that point. I very carefully disposed of the needles I used into a safe sharps container (one with the little biohazard sticker on it), as well as the cloth I’d used and my gloves. I was extremely careful and thorough in disposing of any material I had come into contact with during the process. Bloodborne illnesses are very real and can be extremely hazardous.
Finally, I made sure I did all the proper aftercare of my skin and the tattoo by applying moisturizing cream to the area daily, covering it for a short time before letting it breathe, avoiding contact with direct sunlight or water for a while, monitoring it for infections, etc., to ensure my skin healed properly and to help the tattoo settle correctly. Different tattoo shops and artists generally have their own preferences and instructions for aftercare, but whatever they are, make sure you follow them by the letter.
Luckily, even though I hated doing it, it looks like I didn’t go too deep into my skin or overwork the area. The lines could definitely be a little sharper, and it remains to be seen whether there will be any fading or blurring. My healing process has been fairly straightforward. There was some swelling when I first started the tattoo and a bit of redness when it was finished. An hour or two later, however, I didn’t feel any pain or irritation in the area. Once covered overnight, it looked almost completely back to normal.
Wrapping Up
I don’t think I’ll become a tattoo collector after this because I don’t necessarily want to appear as a tattooed person. (Hey future me — how’s that holding up?) I love tattoos and tattoos as an art form. Honestly, tattoos are beautiful, incredible mixes of drawing, illustration, and design coupled with the unique challenges posed by the nature of the medium. I’m also kind of attached to how I look without them.
Yet, here I am.
To me, and without getting too personal, doing this was like making a save point at a place in a game you might want to revisit some time later. Now I can do that whenever I look at my wrist. I feel like I’ve been very conservative in displaying my unbridled joy at having this tattoo because I had other things to discuss, but I really am just ecstatic about it. It feels like something that was missing so long I forgot it belongs there. And it’s in the form of a fictional language created by dragons that references something that really flipped some kind of creative switch for me, all of which I’m just over the moon about.
And this (in reference to the entire article) is why I’m wearing a watch over my tattoo. There’s a lot about this whole thing I haven’t even said because I thought it would be too boring or too personal. And let me just tell you, the first draft of this article was already over 1,000 words. That’s a burden that old lady at the grocery store didn’t ask for, but you did.
Thank you so, so much for reading this.
Look out for our upcoming article about our creations for Inktober 2018! You just got a sneak peek at day 9 from me.
If you want to read more of me talking about art and games, check out the article I did about the animation process behind Cuphead. Maybe I’ll learn you a thing. Or if you want proof of my passion for Skyrim/TES, I wrote an even longer article than this one on the Elder Scrolls VI trailer back around E3 2018. Brevity who? I don’t know her. I also care deeply and emphatically about butts. If you also care about butts, check out this awesome video game butt book being made by Laura Kate Dale. It’s a beautiful thing that needs to exist in the world.
