Meet the Midnight Matinee

Midnight Matinee Tattoo is a (sadly) fictional studio built to demonstrate REV23 and highlight its features. Every screenshot in these docs comes from it, and every example is a setting that actually exists there.

The cards

The lore

None of this is required reading — it introduces the cast you’ll meet in the screenshots and cards.

Midnight Matinee Tattoo works out of a converted 1920s movie palace in Sombra Springs, Arizona — a copper-boom town that half-emptied when the mine closed. The theater survived. The marquee spells the shop name, the ghost light still burns on the old stage, and the bat colony that moved in from the mine pours out over the marquee at dusk. The old ticket booth still gives the facade its silhouette, but the working box office is the lobby concession counter, and the restored candy cases hold the jewelry now. Friday and Saturday nights run past midnight.

The cast

Victoria Vale — owns the house. She sits for consultations on Mondays, the day the theater is dark: she’s in doing the payroll anyway.
Johnny Requiem — senior tattooer. Every piece starts with a consult across the table, and the deposit is handed over in person — gas money for his band’s next run of shows.
Ophelia Graves — fine-line Victoriana. She sells the day rather than the hour: book five hours and it rings as a full day, not a half plus change.
Chet Marsh — the apprentice, and the shop’s paranormal evidence-keeper. He runs the flash wall, which makes him the one artist you can’t book: the designs are already drawn and pinned up, and you take one off the wall when you walk in.
Madame Minta Crowe — the most in-demand piercer in the house. She holds séance-styled jewelry consults in the old vaudeville dressing room, her table is eighteen and up, and her chair holds with a $13 deposit. The number is not an accident.
Sam Hain — pierces the Kids’ Matinee and is always counting down to Halloween. His is the only free chair in the house: instant bookings, no money down.
Lorelei “Lo” Batts — works the bat hours and talks bats at any opportunity. She books by request, and hers is the pending queue the desk works through.
Vivienne LaCroix — permanent makeup; she calls them resurrections. She sets her own prices, and her license hangs under her own name.
Gloria Usher — runs the box office from the concession counter, where she can see the lobby, work the pending queue, and sell the retail.

House rules

No two people at the Matinee book, price, or get paid the same way — on purpose. If REV23 can do it, somebody at the Matinee does it. The standing rules, and the pages that teach them:

Schedules — the house goes dark every Monday and the first Sunday of every month. Every artist keeps different hours, and consult days are scoped so the calendar only offers the right work.
Deposits — tattoos hold with $50, permanent makeup with $100, piercings walk in free. Madame Minta’s chair holds with $13 and approves on the spot.
Online Booking — every chair books differently: Sam is instant, Lo is by request, the tattooers are consultation-first, and Chet isn’t online at all.
Booking Rules — any Friday the 13th is Flash Day: no appointments noon to ten, $13 walk-in classics. At ten the Midnight Spookshow takes the stage — tattoo chairs only, three completed visits to claim one. Kids aged 2–15 pierce at the noon-to-two Kids’ Matinee, and Minta’s séance room is eighteen and up.
Policies — the same rules in plain language for customers: booking, cancellation, deposits, refunds, no-shows, plus Lo’s stricter personal no-show policy.
Checkout Rules — Wednesdays 2–5 take 15% off every piercing line, and paying cash takes 5% off on its own — no one at the desk has to remember it.
Jewelry — the concession case rings piercing fee plus jewelry, stocked at keystone retail down to the 18g × 7mm high-nostril post.
Tax Rates — Arizona sales tax lands on the goods only; labor is untaxed.
Compensation — straight commissions, Johnny’s sliding scale, Vivienne’s own price sheet, Gloria’s 10% on product. Payday resolves them all.