Just wondering if I should or should not get a Tattoo, also… can I choose the Respectable option twice, once this year, and once next year?(or does it have to be a different quality, period?)
Respectable is only once (so only +1 R maximum,) while you can get a Bizarre or Dreaded this year and choose another Bizarre or Dreaded tattoo again next year.
Only once hmmm? Oh well, I am Persuasive anyway, so don’t want to ruin my skin. Tho if someone gets a Tattoo that is their thing, and each to their own.
I’ve been very particular to get only Bizarre tattoos. I certainly don’t want people thinking “Yikes, that person looks tough and unapproachable.” Not so bothered if they’re thinking “…why do you have a tattoo of a unicorn in a smoking cap reading a book of modern verse?”
I just they had respectable tattoo’s(I bet those could exist, in the backwards ways of the neath…)
edited by Naomi Barlett on 2/18/2017
I just they had respectable tattoo’s(I bet those could exist, in the backwards ways of the neath…)
edited by Naomi Barlett on 2/18/2017[/quote]
Respectable tattoos certainly could exist, and not just in the Neath.
It’s all the odder as even at the end of the C19, tattoos were still a fairly upper-crust thing. If you had tattoos, either you were a sailor – who had developed their own traditions since the days of Captain Cook – or an aristocrat. Even the real-life Prince Bertie (FL’s Redundant Heir, I think) got one at some point. This 1898 Victorian puff piece for a London tattoo artist calling himself ‘Professor Riley’ claims that he can barely keep up with demand (starts halfway down the page):
http://virtualvictorian.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/tattooed-by-royal-appointment.html
The Harmsworth Monthly Pictorial Magazine was late Victorian Buzzfeed, complete with native advertising, listicles, and saccharine pictures – so this is basically a C19 advertorial, to be taken with several pinches of salt (‘TATTOOED ROYALTY – No. 7 Will Scandalise You!’). It does mention that by the late 1890’s, tattoo machines had advanced enough for artists to begin offering costly reproductions of famous paintings and portraits, ideal for the members of the Upper Ten Thousand. Very respectable.
But I like to think that since Victorian copywriters were unimpeachably honest and would never embroider a story, the following tales are also 110% legit:
The most FL tattoo:
"An official connected with one of our leading railways has had tattooed round his arm, in snake fashion, a train going at full speed. The scene is laid at night. The shades of evening envelop the snorting locomotive and flying carriages, while the rays of light proceeding from the open furnace of the locomotive are effectively shown lighting up the cars. There are lights, two, issuing from the carriages, showing how the passengers inside are passing away the time. Some of them are reading, some sleeping, some talking, some sullenly looking out of the windows. A darkened portion of the train is passing the signal box, and the dim light there from faintly lights up that part of the train. The picture is a perfect ideal of the tattooer’s art, and shows the great advance tattooing has made during recent years."
Love is cruel:
[i]"An English actress had a butterfly tattooed on her fair shoulder, the initials of her fiance, "F.V." being placed underneath. Not long afterwards she also came back and had the "F" converted into "E" and the "V" into "W", the letters reading "E.W." She eventually married "E.W." and to this day "E.W" thinks his initials were the first tattooed on her arm."
"A lover whose heart was once melted away in a soft, sweet, passionate love, got the artist to imprint in indelible inks, over the region of his heart, a single heart of charming and delicate outline, coloured, as it should be, in all the blushing tints, with the name of his loved one stamped thereon. Three years afterwards he followed the artist to London, and, seeking him out, with face pallid, the light of his eye almost gone out, and looking utterly miserable and care-worn, he requested that the tattooer to imprint under that same symbol, in bold, big letters, the work "deceived". "[/i]
Say it ain’t so.
I wish I could have got another point of Respectable for eschewing the tattoo. Curse my role-playing of a prude who finds the thought of marring her body with ink unthinkable.
To be fair, "Respectable" here are more about being prim and proper, that sort of things, no? It is very hard to broadcast to the world something like that without resembling a caricature.
It seems that you get Dreaded and Bizarre because it earns you recognition from other people of importance in the Neath - people who recognize the importance of these tattoo, their craftsmanship (you are, after all, getting it from a woman who boinked a tiger and is lusting after a Space-Crab) and their Neathbow inks of Gant.
I guess you can try to declare your spiritual purity with Southwark’s or Fiarce’s face, but one of them is on the Dreaded side and the other changes so frequently that your tattoo would have gone outdated in a week. And the Empress and her shadow both looks like potatoes.
[quote=Estelle Knoht]To be fair, "Respectable" here are more about being prim and proper, that sort of things, no? It is very hard to broadcast to the world something like that without resembling a caricature.
I guess you can try to declare your spiritual purity with Southwark’s or Fiarce’s face, but one of them is on the Dreaded side and the other changes so frequently that your tattoo would have gone outdated in a week. And the Empress and her shadow both looks like potatoes.[/quote]
‘Respectable’ has always seemed the least-defined BDR trait to me, I suppose because it’s the one that it’s most possible to spin as a facade. Sometimes it seems more about being wealthy and well-connected (the Majestic Pleasure Yacht), sometimes prim and proper (God’s Editors).
Pondering what actually could be a Respectable tattoo – maybe Omnis traductor traditor, in an emphatic typeface, for diehards. Augustine and the Bat, for the devout. And for socialites, a silhouette of the Captivating Princess…on second thought, maybe not. Maybe, instead of no tattoo at all, a mysterious design that can be seen by all but those unfit for their position, or hopelessly stupid. You can see it, can’t you?
The likeliest non-caricature thing I can think of would be a Royal Cypher, since high-ranking courtiers really were presented with Royal Cypher jewellery as a mark of special favour. Getting a Cypher tattoo would be easier than rising to the most precarious of social pinnacles, but still show commitment. Although it could possibly get mistaken for a gesture of solidarity with London’s postal services.
edited by Vexpont on 2/22/2017