[spoilers] Lucas and his tattoos

[binkie]

(10-12-2010 08:29 PM)Byatil Wrote:  Binkie... marry me?

Name the day

(10-12-2010 08:29 PM)Byatil Wrote:  Each character who interacts with the tattoos seems to interact with a different one, so I'm assuming that was intended to hold some significance. For SC, it is plausible she was toying with the idea of her own morality in relation to the crosses, or perhaps signifying her desire to understand Lucas better. In any case, I thought it was interesting that the tattoos held such significance throughout S7 and 8, and were then suddenly abandoned in S9 (aside from an unnecessary topless scene!).

This ^^ is a really interesting observation. I always think of the tattoos as a sort of script-within-Lucas'-script. They are the story of themselves, and the story of their writing, yet we see them infrequently and often incompletely. I like the idea that the flashes we catch of this other story - this other narrative - are serving a threefold purpose: telling us something about Lucas (because there is no way for them not to do so), telling us something about the other character in the scene (your note of that detail regarding Sarah and the cross is a perceptive one), and telling us something about the relationship between Lucas and that other character. As you say, by the time of season 9 the sole narrative function of the tattoos seemed to have been reduced to: "Ah yes, Lucas. He has tattoos, you know."