I’ve done some more tattoo research and found something. Not that I’d have a tattoo fetish, but with the language barrier the tattoos are one of the very few clues to learn something about the girls. And it is a nice pastime for a lazy sunday afternoon. Googling for lesbian runes led me down a rabbit hole to identify two, possibly three of Nina’s tattoos.
The symbols on Nina’s chest and left shoulder blade seem to originate from a series of fantasy novels “The Mortal Instruments” by Cassandra Clare. Some urban fantasy setting with a conflict between angels and demons, and the protagonists all have these magical(?) runes all over their bodies, I guess they are not just tattoos. There has been a movie adaptation “City of Bones” which didn’t get the intended sequels and a tv show “Shadowhunters” which ran for three seasons.
The symbol on Nina’s chest is the Angelic Power Rune, a central symbol of the series which appears in a lot of promo material, you’ll find screenshots of a character with that same tattoo at the same spot. The symbol on Nina’s left shoulder blade is the Gift/Talent rune and, according to some wikis, associated with a wish for greatness. One would guess this relates to Nina’s musical ambitions.
Further googling for weapons associated with the material shows a lot of curved blades with rune inscriptions. For lack of a better idea I’m willing to assume the Tattoo on Nina’s left forearm is something like that, although none of the found images looks much like it. Maybe the tattoo simply predates the production design of movie and tv show.
It sure is a generational thing, but I’m a little sceptic about so many young folks getting so many tattoos these days. From own experience there are many things that might seem deep and meaningful at one point in life, and not so much five years further down the road. I hope she won’t regrett getting these tattoos in the future. At least the runes are abstract and nondescript, the knife thingy however is not very subtle.
I don’t want to belittle Nina for being so enthusiastic about works of fiction, on the contrary, I find that very relatable and could tell stories of my own about fictions that mean quite a lot to me. Suffice to say that if I were the tattoo type I’d probably have at least a Starfleet symbol on my chest.