@magonumberfive asked:
Okay but do you have ideas for common tattoos in the different regions at all or tattoo culture across the world
Since Kanto/Johto/Hoenn/Sinnoh are all based off of different Japanese regions, I feel like there’s a similarity with the idea people have of tattoos. While there starts to be more open-mindedness towards it, it is still very much linked to gangsters and yakuza. People with tattoos can even see themselves refused entry to some public baths. It’s still rather marginalized because of how the aforementioned link is deeply rooted in the collective mind, although people are starting to be more open toward it. The tattoos one will see are most often easy to hide, on the discreet side, hidden for social and employment reasons, though you also have some rarer people who will go all out with them and take it to the extreme. I would say roughly 4-8% of the population has a tattoo of some kind? Tattoo artists are not hard to find, but they’re rare. In Johto, Jay would be considered as rather heavily tattooed (in Unova as well, but not as heavily when compared to the Unovan average vs the Johto average).
In the Unova/Kalos/Galar regions, tattoos are way more accepted, and people don’t mind them being visible as much as they would in the four other regions. Unova has the highest percentage of people sporting a tattoo at around 35%. In those regions, more than half of the tattooed people have them in places that can be easily hidden, but visible tattoos aren’t frowned upon in public (although they might make it harder to get some jobs). Back in the day, some factions would get tattoos to signify belonging to a certain class (mostly sailors and military people, e.g. getting an anchor after their first trip to sea, then another symbol at another important moment, and so on). There was also a trend among some twenty years or so ago to get words in eastern script tattooed. While some people had accurate writings, others may have ended up with ‘chicken noodle soup’ written on their arm instead of ‘freedom’. Nowadays, people can get whatever design they set their minds to as a means of self-expression.
Which leaves us with Alola, which draws a bit on the western-based regions, with the addition of traditional Alolan tattoos. These particular tattoos aren’t only for ornamentation, but to guard health and spiritual well-being as well. Their symbolism is deeply-rooted in nature and tradition, and they are mostly all black ink. Most artists use modern tools to make them, but some rare people still use the traditional, much more painful method.
