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Pen & Ink was created by Isaac Fitzgerald and Wendy MacNaughton as a place for those with body art to share the stories behind it. It features each person’s name and occupation, a fun sketch of each tattoo diagramming where it is on the body, and, of course, the reasoning for it. Leo, one of the tattooists quoted in Margo DeMello’s Bodies of Inscription asserts:

[A] genuine tattoo…. tells a story. I like stories and tattoos, no matter how well done, and if they don’t tell a story that involves you emotionally, then they’re just there for decoration, then they’re not a valid tattoo. There has to be some emotional appeal or they’re not, to my way of thinking, a real tattoo. It tells people what you are and what you believe in, so there’s no mistakes.