Bad tattoos happen. You can do everything in your power to make a smart tattoo decision—things like researching your artist, thinking through every element of the tattoo and making sure to take care of your ink throughout the healing process—and still end up with a tattoo that bums you out. Sometimes there’s nothing wrong with the tattoo at all, you just end up falling out of love with your ink decades after getting it. 

So what are you going to do with that bad tattoo? As far as we can tell you have four options. 

1. Laser removal. The cons here are that it hurts like a mofo and you’re going to need a lot of sessions to completely remove a tattoo. And even when it’s completely removed there may still be some scarring involved. Not ideal. 

2. Get a cover-up. Cover-ups can be great, but often you’re going to have to get some laser removal in order to make a cover-up possible, and, again, laser removal is insanely painful. 

3. Live with it. This is clearly the worst option. Don’t do it. 

4. Get a frickin’ badass blast over tattoo. 

Over the last couple of months I have fallen completely in love with blast overs. My adoration for blast overs is not just based on the aesthetics, mind you. I like to think about them intellectually. 

There’s something about laser removal or cover-ups that feels disingenuous to me. To me, it feels like you’re shamefully trying to hide your past. Tattoos are permanent and they’re meant to be that way, so going out of your way to erase a decision you made that you intended to last until the day you die feels a little wrong to me. 

That’s the beauty of a blast over. It doesn’t hide your past—it leaves it there for everybody to see—while at the same time altering the original tattoo into a piece of art you’re proud to be wearing. The flaws are still there and open for discussion, but they’ve been beautified. 

Yes, I’m fully aware that I’m probably overthinking things, but if MGK is doing it, it can’t be a bad idea, right?

Yes, that last line was facetious, but that doesn’t change the fact that blast over tattoos rule. They show that you don’t take things too seriously, that you don’t mind poking fun at soem of the tattoo mistakes you’ve made in the past. And, simply put, they look fucking awesome. I know I said that already, but it’s true. And over the course of the next 50 photos you will see exactly why blast over tattoos are the only way to go.