sophistre

The tattoo is beautiful! But also, the quoted advice above is the best advice ever, and I know from personal experience. I got a tattoo I wasn't thrilled with, and as soon as I got tattoos around it, I kinda made my peace with it. Seriously -- it works. :)

Dune is incredible. ...you can safely skip the rest of them. I remember the second one being ....okay... but disappointing just because it was nothing like the first one. After that, I don't remember anything about them at all except for the disappointment.

The color 'settles in,' to borrow Synesthesia's phrase, because your immune system continues to ferry ink particles into your lymph system slowly, and because you grow new layers of epidermis, so the bits of ink wind up kinda swallowed up by more cells, and, yeah. You can't prevent that. Unless you stop making new cells. In which case you would be dead, so don't do that.

I love the simplicity of that. I keep saying I probably won't get my chest/neck tattooed because I like to wear jewelry, but...that sure is lovely.

I play with the Oculus every time I go to PAX, and it has gotten better and better every single time. This last PAX it felt like basically a polished product. I'm pretty excited. All three VR sets are supposed to be out next year, though. We are fast closing in on release!

I enjoy looking at his in-progress stuff, but I wish he would take the dark filters off of his shots, because it makes stuff really hard to see. :(

From what I have read in the last couple of pages of this thread, the Malazan stuff sounds like the Simarillion had a baby with Gene Wolfe's Shadow of the Torturer stuff. With maybe some Viriconium sprinkled on top. I'm curious! I can add it to the pile of 'gigantic fantasy epics that take years to chew through' with the Gormenghast books, which I still have not finished. I have been reading a LOT, because I'm too tired at night right now to do anything else. I just finished With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa, by Eugene Sledge. I picked it up because it was frequently quoted in Ken Burns' WWII documentary 'The War,' which I just finished watching. (It's amazing, but it's Ken Burns, so yeah.) Also been reading a lot of short stories and horror, as usual. Stephen Graham Jones' After the People Lights Have Gone Off; Fungi, which is a collection of fungus-themed weird tales by a bunch of big names (Vandermeer, Mamatas, Barron, Tanzer)' A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay, which is kind of an exorcism novel and kind of more than that; Last Days by Adam Nevill, a paranormal occulty investigation-documentary type book that actually gave me the creeps to read at night, which is no mean feat, because very little in fiction actually makes me uneasy anymore. I'm still analyzing it to figure out what made it work so well. The New Black: A Neo-Noir Anthology is probably really self-explanatory. Nightmare Carnival, edited by Dennis Danvers, with a bunch of carnival-focused short weird fic. Ominous Realities: The Anthology of Dark Speculative Horrors. Non-fiction, I just recently finished The Man Who Wasn't There: Investigations into the Strange New Science of the Self, by Anil Ananthaswamy. It's a layperson's neuroscience book about the brain-body connection and its significant role in forming what we think of as the Self, and it somewhat contests the (now fairly popular) hypothesis that the Self has no static parts at all, and doesn't actually really exist. Good stuff. And right now, I'm almost halfway through The Quiet Room: A Journey out of the Torment of Madness, by Lori Schiller and Amanda Bennett. It's about Schiller's descent into schizophrenia, her experiences with it, and her recovery process. There are irritating parts of it (Schiller and her family are extremely wealthy/successful and have some pretty glaring biases against 'lesser' types of people, bleh) but it's still really fascinating. - - - Updated - - - Oh, and I just learned that China Mieville has a new collection of stories out as of this summer, and nobody told me, even though he might be my favorite. So, yeah. Good readin' summer. :)

I have been crazy-busy and absent, but you guys have been getting some killer tattoos! That tiger on the ribs, SeeSea's monmon cat, and omeletta's lion all made me super-jealous!

I have never seen a thread for this anywhere on the forums, but sometimes I see a tattoo somewhere and it makes me go OH MY GOD THAT IS SO AMAZING and I want to share it with you guys, but since it isn't mine, I can't put it in the Lowdown thread. So, I thought I would make a thread for posting pictures of killer tattoos that don't belong to us, just to share them and 'oooooh, ahhhhh' over them. ...As I type this I'm realizing that probably 6 out of 10 rad tattoos I see on instagram turn out to belong to somebody here, so maybe this is redundant, but oh well! If it dies, it dies. :) And I'm going to contribute something, because my regular tattooer just did a thing that made my eyeballs pop out of my head, and inspired me to make the thread in the first place, because I needed people to squee about it with. Picture on greggletron's instagram and, video: And here's a video.

Weird. Was it specifically latex foam, or was it memory foam? I can't stand memory foam, but latex foam works really well for me since it's bouncy. You're definitely not the only one. :) The more comfortable you can be, the more still you can stay, and the happier everyone will be! You can't help it if a position causes you pain. Totally not your fault!

Maybe try a latex foam pillow instead of a blow-up one? It would probably have more yield while still being supportive, and I suspect the pain if you're on one hip is related to nerves and blood flow. Something under your ribs and head to try to keep your spine in alignment might also help. Sorry to hear about this -- I've definitely had a similar experience, though I don't think it was quite that bad.

HAHA. I know. They're all crazy up here. When I was looking at houses my friends in the area were like 'you don't need it up here! It never gets that hot!' and EVERY YEAR they pop into voice chat when we're gaming like 'OH MY GOD WHY IS IT SO HOT I AM DYING.' I know it's unflattering to be smug, but... :rolleyes:

UGH, all of that conversation about it, and now I don't think I can go. My AC/heat pump/furnace are on the fritz (AGAIN) and I'm pretty sure this means I don't have the funds to sort that out AND have surgery in November and still do this convention. :( Next year, though. Next year for sure.

It is entirely possible for your body to be allergic to titanium, believe it or not! Anodized titanium can also be problematic for some people. 'Turning' jewelry is not actually good practice, even though a LOT of places still recommend it -- it tends to rupture the forming fistula. And although saline is great for cleaning, if it's over-used, it can be very drying (as you might expect, given its composition). Could've been any number of things, honestly -- tough to say without experimenting, but I can certainly understand why you wouldn't want to go through that kind of discomfort for very long! It sounds very uncomfortable. :( It could be that your body is hyper-sensitive to foreign materials in it, but I don't think that would happen with tattoos. Ink is not a solid of the same variety, so the immune response will be different...but, I think the small 'test' suggestion is a really good one. (For whatever it's worth, I've had mild trouble with some red inks, where the healing is prolonged in those spots, but even then everything turned out alright...it was just a slightly rougher heal for me. From what I understand, this is not uncommon, so no need to panic!)

HERE IT IS I briefly saw this in the post-PAX haze, and then I couldn't find it again. I am such a huge fan of the way that tiger was done. It's fierce but has a different face than I've usually seen, and those PAWS.

Can't find a name, though I did find another shot of the same dude: Tumblr suggests this is from C. 1870-1880, which seems awfully specific. But, since it's tumblr....grain of salt. Or several. I am sure you already poked through this. Beyond that I'm not sure. :(

Well, now that PAX is over and I've had two days to sleep it off, I can get around to doing internet stuff. @beez and I had a super fun time hanging out at Liberty a bit ago, because we decided we should probably go and get tattoos. Here is mine, by Christopher Ayalin: Good times! Spent PAX wandering around the exhibition hall feeling like the leg of my jeans on that side was full of mosquitoes, though. Ha.

I have a tattoos on my upper arms, and it works just fine! In fact, I've said it before elsewhere (maybe even in this thread, but I'm too lazy to look), but tattooing made me finally feel comfortable in t-shirts. My weight has been terrible the last couple of years, and though I made a lot of headway with my recent training, I'm still overweight. I used to be tiny, so my awareness of my extra weight sticks with me throughout the day. T-shirts used to make that worse. It's very draining to be constantly aware throughout the day of something about yourself that makes you uncomfortable, so I avoided them a lot. I don't do that anymore, though, because all of my feelings about my arms are positive now. I mean...I'm not guaranteeing that everybody will instantly feel comfortable with themselves after getting a tattoo, but for me personally, it has helped. It was like planting a flag on my own body, or something. Hard to describe. Tattooing has me appreciating my physique. It's more real estate to put beautiful tattoos on. Haha! :o (This is actually a thing, though. Having more room to work with can mean having even more concepts for tattoos open to you on certain body parts!

Yeah! From Chris Ayalin. Dagger with a rose and snake. He hasn't put the pic up yet, though, and I forgot to take one!

Honestly, I think the apprehension and not-knowing before getting your first one is about 1000x worse than anything you'll experience afterward...because while, yeah, it does hurt, for the most part it's a known quantity and you know sorta what to expect. At least, that's how it has been for me. We were joking last night at Liberty about how we get wussier with every tattoo we get, because the first few you're like 'I'm gonna tank this like a champ! There's no way I'm gonna wuss out! BRING IT ON!' by #6 it's like 'oh god damnit here we go again' and you kinda whine about it a little more. That said, I think the fact that most people who get tattooed go back for more of the same is an indication that it's totally worth it in pretty much every way. :) To stay on-topic: lower leg tattoo presents fresh challenges, like my cats trying to rub on my legs, and one of my cats LICKED IT WITH HIS FILTHY CAT MOUTH EW. Should be fun walking around PAX with this thing healing. Woooo

I've never seen a fish morph! That's a great idea. I'm obsessed with these right now. I love this one!

I'm not a psychologist, but... So much of psych profiling is about context. If they're working from scratch with you, it might just be another scrap that they throw into the bucket of overall information. I imagine given certain trends it probably IS safe to make some assumptions about someone with many tattoos, or at least use that as reinforcement for assumptions based on other things. Like, maybe they weigh that against an individual's tendency to be pressured (or not) by societal/cultural norms, or acceptance of risk vs being risk averse, or...I dunno. Something like that? Or maybe they're being judgy...but that would be weird and professionally counter-productive! Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk

I wouldn't hate anything about this arrangement! I will be astonished if I can make that happen, but I'd do it in a heartbeat. You're right about the other stuff, though. It'll probably be hard to lose, wherever I end up. Can't wait to find out. :cool:

I am giggling a little at this post because this forum has done anything but help me narrow down the list of people I would get tattoos from, haha! I know what you meant, though. Truth is, I don't actually have any specific tattoo ideas, and I'd probably change what I wanted depending on who it was, so that makes it hard for well-meaning internet friends to help me choose! I've been kind of interested in a foo dog, lately. Maybe a really excellent lady head? ...or anything. That's always the hardest part for me -- not that there's nothing I want or only something very specific, but that there's SO MUCH I would get, it's hard to narrow it down!

Thank you both for the advice! I appreciate all of it. If I can manage to figure out who I would even contact (not because there isn't anybody I'd like to be tattooed by, but because there are just SO MANY people), I'll give it a shot...and definitely plan to be there early on Friday. :)