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Motif · motif_gun

Gun

A firearm - in traditional flash usually a revolver. Attested twice: as a common traditional element, and as an alternative component of the Man's Ruin composition. No fetched source gives a gun a meaning of its own.
Attested
Low confidenceresearched

1 attested · 1 promoted2 sources · T2

What the research says

motifs_seed
Category
weapon
Variants
revolver; crossed pistols
Common styles
american traditional
Common themes
vice
Composition behaviors
alternative to a knife as the weapon in a Man's Ruin composition

Provenance

2 resolved

  • Traditional Style Tattoos: Drawing Tutorial (opens in a new tab)

    Tier 2

    Tattooing 101

    Professional tattoo education page. Enumerates the traditional element list verbatim: "Butterflies, moths, wolves, tigers, bears, panthers, snakes, eagles, owls, hourglasses, skulls, portraits, pin up girls, guns, and daggers are all common elements in traditional tattoo design", and separately "nautical themes are found often in American Traditional like anchors, lighthouses, mermaids, ships, sharks, octopuses, messages in a bottle, compasses, and rope". Unusually for a trade page it also states COMPOSITION behaviour: "using a dagger in your designs can emphasize the lines of the body", and that a rope frame "makes designs more circular to fit rounded areas better". Those two are the only composition_behaviors values in this sub-batch that are sourced rather than blank.

    professional tattoo source · retrieved 2026-08-30

  • Man's Ruin, what else? (opens in a new tab)

    Tier 2

    Maggie Whales, Tattoo Life

    Tattoo magazine feature on the Man's Ruin composition. Verbatim, INCLUDING the page's own spelling and grammar, transcribed faithfully rather than corrected: "a long-stemmed cocktail glasss with an fallen woman, playing cards in the background and a weapon, like a gun or knife, to complete the picture". States the composition "brings together the vices which cause the downfall of man, all those things which man cannot control". This is a COMPOSITION-level meaning: the reading belongs to the assembled group, and this batch edges it to the component objects only with that scope written on each edge.

    professional tattoo source · published 2022-05-19 · retrieved 2026-08-30

Related concepts

2 links

Can symbolize · 1

  • → outgoingViceSymbolThin
    strength 0.25researched

    COMPOSITION-SCOPED, exactly like the cards and the glass. The source names it as one of two interchangeable options - “a weapon, like a gun or knife, to complete the picture” - inside the assembly it says “brings together the vices which cause the downfall of man”. A gun outside a Man's Ruin is not covered.

Frequently used in · 1

  • → outgoingAmerican TraditionalStyleThin
    strength 0.50promoted · not an independent attestationresearched

    Promoted from motifs_seed.common_styles of motif_gun ('american traditional'). Provenance inherited from the parent row(s): source_tattooing101_draw_traditional; source_tattoolife_mans_ruin; the first is carried in source_id. No new fact: this edge restates a value already present in the corpus. STRENGTH 0.5 set by the T11.11c rule: this pairing is asserted by ONE parent row's association column and by no second row; the pack's scale reads 0.5 as 'context-dependent'. Inputs are corpus counts only - no source count, tier or confidence is used.