Behind the Screen: Interview with Dyes of Our Lives writers Kate Bolin and Katie Vieceli

by Mark Freeman

Episodic: For those people that are new to the series, how would you describe it?

Vieceli/Bolin: It's a trashy soap opera with a lot of gay characters. All of the characters are based on hair dye boxes.

Episodic: I like the fact that you can see the faces from the boxes on the site. But how do you go from spinning tales about the faces on dye boxes to creating the world of DYES?

Vieceli/Bolin: Well, it's very odd. We'll see the picture on the dye box, think up a character for them, and then try to figure out how they fit into the cast we already have. What they do at night, their job, their likes, dislikes, etc. Sometimes characters will look alike on the boxes so we make them siblings. Stuff like that. Of course, when we first started out, it was easier, because the characters created the soap itself. Sometimes, especially now that the plot is moving, we'll look for boxes that can fit a particular character we need-like the "quiet shy girl" or "the hopelessly gay bartender." And of course, of course, Katie can always be tempted by a pretty face on a box.

Episodic: What other writing have you done before?

Vieceli: Mostly fan fiction for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," some fic for "Zelda: The Ocarina of Time," and random articles for school publications.

Bolin: Mostly fan fiction for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" too (that's how we met), but a few articles here and there.

Episodic: Series time seems to be passing quite slowly, but real time maybe a bit quicker. What's your posting schedule?

Vieceli/Bolin: Every two weeks. We had a semi-hiatus during summer, when Katie went out of the country. And before this year, we tended to put this off if we were too busy. With school, work, and Kate's wedding/move, we were really too busy, unfortunately.

Episodic: Congratulations Kate. Tell us a little about the two of you.

Vieceli/Bolin: Kate, 24, lives in Nottingham, England, with her husband. When she's not designing web sites for fun, she tries to design them for cash. And when she's not designing web sites, she's trying to hunt down American food, which is harder than you think. Especially New Orleans cuisine. Katie, 21, is an all-around hard worker, annoying often, but lazy never, lesbian feminist in the "get the hell out of my way" vein. Anti-social, nasty, and secretive in her personal life, but she can tell you this: Born in Carbondale, Illinois. Currently living in New Orleans. About to graduate.

Episodic: And what color is you hair right now?

Bolin: Schwarzkopf Live Violet Vision, which might become a new character, depending on if we need it.

Vieceli: An inch of my real color, the rest Pomegranate. However, I'm dying it back to Cherry Cola, since I'm feeling for the guy right now.

Episodic: So how do you manage the site between you?

Vieceli/Bolin: We work out the plot together. Katie writes the episode. Kate edits it and puts it online. She cleans it up a bit, but it's pretty much Katie's writing.

Episodic: Let's talk about the fictional characters. For the most part they don't seem to deal with too much explicit prejudice in their lives. A couple of frat boys are seen making comments and Rose makes her feelings known early on. Would you agree that they live in a fairly accepting world?

Vieceli/Bolin: It's not so much that they live in a particularly accepting world as it is that they tend to stay within an accepting subset of their world. Rose's recent troubles have indicated that there is prejudice alive and well in the community of Rosewood, as well as Mr. Nutrisse's comments to Midnight way back in Ep 3.

As she began to gather the menus together, placing them in her briefcase, Mr. Nutrisse continued. "I can't tell you how relieved I was when I heard you had opened up here in Rosewood. You're so much more..." He paused, searching for the right words. "...family oriented than Shimsion."

And Dark's previous girlfriend [Dark is a transvestite--Mark]:

Dark looked down at the table, his eyes half shut. "We broke up. She wouldn't introduce me to her parents...and she finally admitted it was because she hoped the whole thing was only a phase I was going through. She said she was ashamed of me."

Let's face it, the characters move in a subset of the world where lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, and homosexual life isn't just accepted, it's the norm. A gay bar, a gay-owned business, a liberal university, a new age store, a fashion business, and a women's center. They stay in places where they know they'll be accepted.

Episodic: There is quite a lot of sex in the series and some drugs. Do you feel the need to moralize with these issues by talking about safe sex for example, or are you happy to let the characters lives speak for themselves?

Vieceli/Bolin: Umm, there's not really a lot of *actual* sex in the series...mostly insinuated stuff (up till now....we will write that "too hot for the web" ep!). Several of the characters do have sex, but that is life. Most of the implied sex has been between established couples, and we do try to mention that most, if not all of it, is safe sex.

But we don't want to preach, because we are trying to present some form of reality here. So yeah, Cola and Gothic are getting tested for AIDS, but not as a "very special episode" of the series, but because they're both fairly intelligent. Auburn is going downhill as a result of her drug use, and that's something that happens in real life too. Anyway, I think if you rub some vaseline over your computer screen and turn on the romantic music, you can see that the level of sex in our soap is pretty much the same as it is on TV, if not tamer.

(Continued)