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looks normal to me, it will take at least 6 weeks to heal and longer to settle in.

well I IMO , if you are that concerned about how a tattoo will look in 5 years, maybe you shouldn't get a tattoo. because it's gonna look like a 5 year old tattoo, all tattoos age, they fade, they meld together some, if it's done by a good reputable artist then it will be fine.

Looks fine to me. Just let it heal.

I did a little Googling and there seems to be quite a bit of info about it. Here's just one. Please be careful, no tattoo is worth risking your health.

Too much "meaning" for me, just get whatever you think looks cooler...

Being young and careless? Not knowing any better? Rushing into a decision? All or none of the above? I'd say it's a case by case basis. The first large tattoo I got, on my forearm no less, is not necessarily something I would get today. I still like the tattoo, but it's in some prime, very visible real estate that I may have otherwise used for a much different, and probably much better, tattoo today. At the time I was younger and far less informed, latched on to a particular idea pretty early, and didn't really consider all possibilities. I rushed into it. Fortunately, I didn't end up with one of those horror stories, but despite liking the tattoo, I'd still probably do things different today.

I can say that in my own "tattoo journey," the first one I got was kind of on a whim. I went to a street shop with @TrixieFaux – she had an appointment; I was a walk-in – with an image that I literally printed out from Google Images, and that's exactly what he tattooed on me. It wasn't bad, just meh. It never occurred to me to do it any other way, but he also didn't suggest how he could make it look cooler or whatever. (Since then I covered it mostly because it was in prime real estate – my shoulder – but I didn't hate it.) I've since learned that's probably not the best way to do it. This was pretty much before Instagram, but it's not like I didn't have access to the information. I just didn't know to look let alone where. At that point, I don't think I had ever even seen a "good" tattoo on anyone in real life. Back in the day when your only option was to pick flash off the wall you'd pretty much know what you're getting. So in a way this trend of "custom" tattooing means you might get a worse tattoo than you would otherwise if you don't know what the F you're doing.

Interesting question! When my wife and I got tattooed in the early 1970s, I think we just thought that "a tattoo is a tattoo." Like "ketchup" - generic. Similarly, I guess we thought that you go to a tattoo artist and get a tattoo, and it never occurred to us at that time that there might be good tattoos and bad tattoos. Granted, the situation was much different at that time. Most tattoo shops were in really bad parts of town, and were really scary places inhabited by really scary people. Honestly, we picked our tattooer because we knew someone who had gotten a tattoo from him, and his shop was the least scary place we could find. When it came right down to it, we just wanted to get tattoos. Quality never crossed our minds. Today, there are so many artists, and so much information about tattooing. Every general interest article about "things to consider when you get a tattoo" advises people thinking to check out the artists portfolio, so there is really no excuse for getting a bad tattoo. But I wonder if some people still look at it like my wife and I did: They just want a tattoo, and the desire sort of blinds them. So they just find a shop, go in, and get a tattoo. I also wonder if after people get a bad tattoo, perhaps they realize it, but don't want to admit that they made a mistake in artist selection.