Ink stinks.
Enough with the tattooed HP characters already! There are some characters who I can see having a tattoo or two - Charlie, for instance, had a dragon tattoo in After the End, which suited him just fine as he works with dragons. Might I add, AtE didn't depict Charlie as an angsty-wangsty Gawth Boy either.
Tonks might well have a tattoo or two, though Harry doesn't notice one. So might Bill, but if his mum find out she'd throw a shoe. But I really, really, REALLY doubt that Harry has any tattoos at all. Ditto Draco. The Malfoys would regard tattooing as a disgusting Muggle weirdness. The Dark Mark - now that's magical so it's OK. And it's well-hidden. Notice that Snape, Lucius Malfoy, and so on don't go around flaunting their Dark Marks like they're fashion statements. The Dark Mark is not a statement of "I am so KEWL." It is a statement of "My body, soul and mind are the property of the Dark Lord and I must do his bidding."
It's not tattoos, per se, that I find cliched and eyeroll-inducing. If you, the writer, can show (not tell) your readers that this character is suited to sporting a tattoo, that's fine. It's the "Tattoos are so SEXXAY" brigade that gets under my skin. Think about Harry, Draco, Ginny, etc. - I doubt they're trying to make hip, edgy, sexy, Muggle fashion statements.
And the gratuitous tattoo-dropping of "Harry had a Hippogriff tattooed on his shoulder, a unicorn on his left arm and a fire-breathing dragon on his Throbbing Member that breathed real fire!" ranks right up there with endless descriptions of clothes and wardrobe. If we wanted to read a fashion magazine or a tattoo magazine, rest assured we'd have picked one of those up instead of the Harry Potter fanfic story we were all expecting.
Tonks might well have a tattoo or two, though Harry doesn't notice one. So might Bill, but if his mum find out she'd throw a shoe. But I really, really, REALLY doubt that Harry has any tattoos at all. Ditto Draco. The Malfoys would regard tattooing as a disgusting Muggle weirdness. The Dark Mark - now that's magical so it's OK. And it's well-hidden. Notice that Snape, Lucius Malfoy, and so on don't go around flaunting their Dark Marks like they're fashion statements. The Dark Mark is not a statement of "I am so KEWL." It is a statement of "My body, soul and mind are the property of the Dark Lord and I must do his bidding."
It's not tattoos, per se, that I find cliched and eyeroll-inducing. If you, the writer, can show (not tell) your readers that this character is suited to sporting a tattoo, that's fine. It's the "Tattoos are so SEXXAY" brigade that gets under my skin. Think about Harry, Draco, Ginny, etc. - I doubt they're trying to make hip, edgy, sexy, Muggle fashion statements.
And the gratuitous tattoo-dropping of "Harry had a Hippogriff tattooed on his shoulder, a unicorn on his left arm and a fire-breathing dragon on his Throbbing Member that breathed real fire!" ranks right up there with endless descriptions of clothes and wardrobe. If we wanted to read a fashion magazine or a tattoo magazine, rest assured we'd have picked one of those up instead of the Harry Potter fanfic story we were all expecting.