How much a tattoo will hurt when you get it, and also the possibility of if it will tickle at all, all depends on where you get it done. And it also depends a bit on the tattoo artist themselves. If they have a heavy hand, you'll likely feel a bit more pain. However, in my case, I have an extremely gentle tattoo artist, who gets off on making me squirm in a ticklish manner, so he always does his best to put me through the most agony possible (non-pain agony). But don't get me wrong...the large 9 inch dragon on my left calf hurt worse than child birth. And the 8 inch tiger butterly on my left arm was also a hard one to grit my teeth through. But both of my tickling symbolic tattoo's did have ticklish moments, as well as painful ones.
As for my reaction, I basically react the same way to the ticklish sensations that I do the painful sensations....try to sit and still as possible, grit my teeth, and squeeze through it. You can NOT move while getting inked. If you do, you could wind up with a really ugly blemish that you'll be stuck with for the rest of your life. And believe me when I tell you it is much easier to sit still when it HURTS, as opposed to when it tickles.
I have let out a stiffled giggle or two (or several) while getting through a particularly ticklish area of a tattoo. My tat artist, since he knows about my ticklish fetish, just gets a sadistic grin on his face and tries to make it tickle that much more. (I think he's a closet ticklephile, since he is constantly tickling the ever living bejeezus out of me, but he will neither confirm nor deny it..he only gets an evil grin and winks).
The Kanji Symbol on my chest was the worst, though. I have a tendency to 'vibrate' when I laugh. In other words, my whole body shakes when I get a good giggling fit going. My collar bones are extremely ticklish, and parts of the tattoo were being drawn and inked right on my collar bones. The tattooing itself did not tickle so much, as the vibrations of the tattoo gun right against my collar bones. That was HELL. At least 3 times, my tattoo artist stopped tattoing, pulled the gun away, peered at me under the brim of his cap, and said "you've GOT to stop vibrating if you don't want this messed up!"
Mimi