When I first moved in with Stephanie, she mentioned that a new tattoo shop – Fabled Fox – had opened up not far from her house. It was queer and neurodivergent owned, so that weekend, we decided to stop by and check out their flash. I wasn’t actually planning to get anything, but then I saw her:

Every once in awhile, I fall in love with a tattoo design instantly. This was one of them, and the artist had her on a pretty deep discount because she was flash and the artist really wanted to tattoo her. I decided that I wanted her in the colors of the lesbian flag, figured out that I wanted to tuck her in on my thigh that already has a bunch of pieces on it, and scheduled the appointment. A few days later, I was in the chair for what turned out to be one of the most painful tattoos I’ve ever gotten. Oof. At least she’s pretty. I named her Paisley.

Fabled Fox then had a Pride event in late June. Stephanie had already gotten her tattoo (scheduled the same day as me) as well, and we both really loved the shop, so we stopped by to check out the vendors and such. At that point, I let myself get talked into a Pride flash tattoo, all of which were only $60. The irony about this tattoo is that three years ago, I was such a snob about fanfiction and had all sorts of stupid, ignorant beliefs about the quality of writing on ff sites. Little did I know that I would eventually discover 1) amazing writers, 2) that my own writing got so much better through writing fanfic, and 3) wonderful communities of friends. So I memorialized that, choosing the AO3 logo tattoo for my spoopy leg.

One of my goals for the year was to get one of my cat memorial tattoos, and I loved the artist who did my ao3 tattoo so much that I decided to commission them for this before I left for Germany. I looked through their work and decided Gavroche would be the best cat for them, so we scheduled a date, and they got information on where his name came from (Les Mis) as well as some pictures. The design came out better than I could have imagined!!

The story of HOW the tattoo got put on is hilarious, though – there was a flood and the electricity went out two lines into my tattoo, so my artist had to do the rest by headlamp! First time for both of us, lol. The lights finally came back on after we finished, ironically.

So that was my last tattoo in the US, at least as of now, because who knows if/when I might be back. I’m not banking my future on anything right now. I know I’d like to spend a year in Germany to get as fluent as possible in the language, and then after that, I have to decide if I want to stay there and try to get residence in the EU, or do something else. That’s for future-Thistle to decide!