Six months ago, when the Sunless Sea Kickstarter was really gathering steam, Liam and I got carried away. We decided that we’d offer to get game-themed tattoos if our funding passed 100K (on an initial threshold of 60K). We set 100K because it sounded low enough to be plausible but high enough that we couldn’t, wouldn’t, surely, actually, make it…

We made it. I know for a fact that one of our higher-end backers increased their pledge by about two thousand dollars in order to ensure that Liam and I both got inked. I… still can’t work out the appropriate compound of fist-shaking and gratitude.

For context, this was my first tattoo. Liam’s too, but he’s a long-haired math-rock thespian boho, and if I were any more whitebread, you could slice me and sell me in a little plastic bag. So when I turned up at the tattoo studio, I felt like a preposterous impostor. They were very nice about it, though the guy did shake his head at me sadly when I asked about pain and location. “Don’t be dictated to by the pain!” he admonished me. “Get the one you want!”

(They’re good, Living Image, though. Friendly teasing aside, they were professional, matter-of-fact and very reassuring.)

Well, for the record, I’m quite happy to be dictated to by pain, but I settled easily enough on the location: I’m a runner, so a calf tattoo made sense, and it’s not too public in case I come to regret it. I havered for a long time about what to get. I’m not superstitious, but I didn’t want anything that convinced my subconscious I’d be dragged down while I was running. I hadn’t wanted to go with Paul’s buoy tattoo design just in case a backer got it as well… I thought it might be embarrassing for both of us to run into someone with the same tattoo, like an identical-outfit thing. But in the end, eh, I really like Paul’s art, it’s the emblem of the game, and it buoys me up, d’ye see? Maybe? Oh hush.

The pain wasn’t bad at all in the end. It was about the level of ow you might get from a cat that won’t put its claws away when it’s playing, although it goes on for a while. (Yes, tattoo veterans, scoff all you like, but I was nervous.) I can’t get over how casual the whole thing was. One appointment, a modest fee, and I’m marked for life. There’s a metaphor in there, or at least a cheap joke about marriage.