It's artsy

Sure "WATER" looks dull if written in boring Arial 10 font with caps lock, but if you add a bit of pizzazz it would look fine as a tattoo. Esp. If you are a non-English speaker.

𝓦𝓪𝓽𝓮𝓻

𝖂𝖆𝖙𝖊𝖗

𝕎𝕒𝕥𝕖𝕣

So many Chinese character tattoos are done in the Chinese equivalent of boring Arial 10 font though, that's part of the point. The one in the photo is at least hand written, but by someone with poor aesthetic sense, it still looks dull and ugly.
- Is there a fancy old Chinese font? What about wing dings?
- Chinese characters in “arial” font would be monowidth lines, no serifs, no real pizzaz. The tattoo in the picture is how I see most Chinese character tattoos. This is still stylized a bit.
- The one in the photo is probably still a font. How many tattoo artists would know how to write in Chinese calligraphy.
Old English script always makes the word look like a different word, like water here looks like bater.
- Go away. Watin'.
Exactly. The characters are in a pretty nice calligraphy font, with tapered edges and slight flourishes. The letters are in the ugliest block print possible.
Miller Lite
Now do pizzazz with a bit of pizzazz.
- Pizza party pizzazz

According to Google translate the visible part says: "Independent, curious and ruthless" which isn't that bad of a text.

Hydro homies out here loving both.
The last one is 狡猾 which means "sly"
It came with "Independence River is curious and ruthless" to me.. interesting

Reminds me of someone who have the Chinese word for "refrigerator" on his right shoulder, and when Chinese people would point and laugh about it, he would roll up his sleeve from his left shoulder where there is a tattoo of a fridge

Bruh what? Imagine thinking water - the bringer of life - isn't cool enough to warrant getting a tattoo of it. I hope his mouth remains eternally slightly dry.

Moisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.
Derek Zoolander
Definitely. Live and drink.

If I'm gonna get a foreign language tattooed on me (and I'm probably not gonna until I'm 80 at least) it's gonna be some Sumerian cuniform, probably hate mail to Ea Nasir.

Someone in another thread (or on a Youtube comment I'm not sure) posted a T-shirt found in Japan that said in English "Too young to live, too fast to die, Cream Soda" which I think is an Initial D lyric.

- It's like, the most aggressive slogan but attached to the most cheerful product imaginable. It's like "Fuck the pain away. Neapolitan Ice Cream."
Engrish in Asian countries is hilarious.
My wife loves buying engrish clothes for the novelty.

Wouldn't it be more like this?

It's more like this

Calligraphy is a traditional art form in China and Japan, so it seems to me like many people there recognize the beauty of the characters. Some people just want an excuse to hate on other people (and for some reason tattoos on other people really draw this behavior out).

Getting a tattoo is a more or less permanent decision. It's soooo very important to make sure tattooed people understand they made a bad decision, because it's permanent! Otherwise I won't feel better about me and my boring small minded self :(
- Also of people are aware of what it says, or that there's no grammar involved, or it's off the real script a bit, they really do just like the calligraphy.
Compare the OP with some actual Chinese artists doing Chinese calligraphy tattoos - for example in Hong Kong or Taiwan (some of the photos are a bit NSFW, so be warned)
There is a bit of difference between "Chinese calligraphy" and "write me a list of words in plain Chinese characters"
I have no problem with people tattooing whatever they want on themselves btw - but it's true that from the perspective of someone who can read Chinese, these tattoos (like in the OP) are not "beautiful Chinese characters" or "calligraphy" - they do come across as mostly just confusing lists of strangely formatted and crudely written random words.
- Yeah I appreciate that there are certainly a lot of bad tattoos that involve Chinese characters. The one shown is probably one of them. I just don't think westerners who use Chinese characters deserve special scorn. There are a lot of bad tattoos that involve western lettering as well.

This site is now dead, but it used to be one of my favorites. It's someone who would translate the Asian-language tattoos people would send in. A lot of them were not even using real symbols or letters, but a lot of others were hilarious.

https://hanzismatter.blogspot.com/

This is one of their last posts and, to be fair to them, it's pretty hard to continue a blog like that once your irony meter has exploded.

Btw, https://hanzismatter.blogspot.com/2006/08/gibberish-asian-font-mystery-solved.html?m=1
- Yeah, a lot of them are in the gibberish font, but there are some entries where they're like "that's not even the gibberish font, I have no idea what the hell that is, what is going on here?!"
That one is probably temporary, at least. During the first few weeks, tattoo ink can be rubbed away every time you wash your hands. You also have a lot of nerves on that side of your hand and the needle hurts like hell. So you go through a lot of pain for something that gets washed away.
It's probably plain ink.
I have a wedding ring tattoo, and the guy who did it strongly discouraged me from going 100% of the way around. Pain kicked up quite a bit when it hit the fleshy part in between fingers.
- Wait, so did you go 100% around anyway?

google translate, translated that as:

Independence River is curious and ruthless

not bad in the realm of Chinese tattoos
- Right? A lot of the worse ones are menu items
btw the Independence River is capitalized because it is interpreting it as a name, the word is just independence.

Chinese writing is a vast world of art and ideas, with probably over 30 thousand different characters, nobody knows for sure how many there are. Not knowing what a character is, to strip it of meaning or cultural baggage, kind of frees one up to appreciate the rhythm and delicate balance of lines as their own thing.
Then again, you do not want to end up with PIG SWAMP MOUNTAIN DWARF NOODLE in permanent ink on your skin.

If you want to see Ewan McGregor naked and his body covered in Chinese calligraphy, sometime between Trainspotting and Star Wars, do check out Peter Greenaway's bonkers visual masterpiece The Pillow Book.

PIG SWAMP MOUNTAIN DWARF NOODLE
Perfectly explainable.
"Pig Swamp" was our frat name in college.
"Mountain Dwarf Noodle" was my nickname.
- Could also be the cousin hold of the most venerable dwarven hold "Boat Murder"
If you want to see Ewan McGregor naked and his body covered in Chinese calligraphy
Uh yes please!
Well, three of those five words are awesome together. SWAMP MOUNTAIN DWARF.

China: Makes the most beautiful calligraphy writing where every word is a pleasure to write and see. Also China: It says 'Soup' down your arm, man. Why are you writing Soup all down your arm?

To express my love for the soup store.

The important thing is to know what it actually says. Outside of that, Chinese and other type writings are artistic in themselves already, so even if it only said "water", if that looked nice why not?

This picture shows that artistic character. If her back had the meaning tattooed in English it might get some odd stares. Unless it was in Papyrus font.

It might look artistic to you, but to a Chinese reader this example looks basic and dull, so they just see the meaning of the words much the same as the "WATER" on the left. There just isn't any real aesthetic or artistic value here, in the context of Chinese writing.
It kind of goes both ways though, back in the day there was a fad in Asia too of people wearing clothes with random English words on them, because there those looked exotic and cool, even though to Westerners it looked a bit dumb.
- That's a good point. Elvish it is then.
Or Wingdings
Papyrus font? like the title from that movie?

So what DOES her tattoo say?

独立 independent/independence
無情 heartless/heartlessness
好奇 curiosity
And something more under her shirt
With some of the word written vertically and some horizontally for whatever reason
- Ok but what does his tattoo say?
- Thank you very much.

Dear China, stop having such a beautiful language then. signed, Mandarin is really hard

Some of the letters should be upside down or backwards to get the full "Tattoo in a language I can't read" experience,

If the western alphabet looks artistic to you, go for it. It you're trying to climb up onto some cultural appropriation moral high ground, well okay then, bye-bye now.

While I get people poking fun at it, people do also get calligraphy or just plain English tattoos too, so clearly pretty writing is used generally for tattoos.
- True, I've seen lots of tattoos of English text. Have also seen people stretch way too far to try to make a weak point like this guy.

back of left hand: 愛
back of right hand: 恨

Even if it does look dumb to you, why not be considerate and leave them alone. "hey I'd like to make you self conscious about that permanent ink you have on your skin". Smh