Finding Dee with Dee Fish

Dee Fish is a Pennsylvania-based cartoonist, illustrator, and graphic designer. As a cartoonist, she is the creator of the online comic strip, “Dandy & Company“. An all-ages humor comic strip in the vein of “Looney Tunes” and “Peanuts” surrounding the misadventures of a dog and his boy that ran from 2001 to 2018. She is also the writer and artist of the creator-owned comic book, “The Wellkeeper", A young adult fantasy/adventure in the vein of mystical adventures that appeal to children of all ages as “Harry Potter” and “The Hobbit”. 
 
As an artist, she has worked on stories for “Tellos”, “The Perhapanauts” and “The Mice Templar” for Image comics, “Star Mage” and “White Chapel” for IDW Publishing, “Atomic Robo” for Red 5 Comics, and the co-creator, co-writer and illustrator for the series “Carpe Noctem” for Hashtag Comics. 
 
Recently, Dee became the artist of Sabrina Pandora’s long-running webcomic, “Giant Girl Adventures”, and in 2017, began her current webcomic, "Finding Dee. "Finding Dee" is the hilarious and heartwarming webcomic about the trials and tribulations of trying to make it as a cartoonist while coming out as transgender in your 40s. 

Dee Fish
Cartoonist, Designer & Illustrator
http://www.findingdeecomic.com
http://www.artofdeefish.com 

Transcript

Musical Intro: 0:35

There's a whole lot of things I want to tell you about. Adventures dangerous and queer. Some you can guess and some I've only hinted at, so please lend me an ear.

Narrator: 1:00

everyone has a relationship with gender. What's your story? Hello and welcome to Gender stories with your host, Dr Alex Iantaffi.

Alex Iantaffi: 1:08

Hello and welcome to another episode gender stories. I know I'm always super excited but I truly am excited to have another wonderful guest and I am here interviewing Dee Fish who is a Pennsylvania based cartoonist, illustrator and graphic designer. As a cartoonist, she is the creator of the online comic strip,“Dandy & Company“. An all-ages humor comic strip in the vein of“Looney Tunes” and “Peanuts” surrounding the misadventures of a dog and his boy that ran from 2001 to 2018. She is also the writer and artist of the creator owned comic book, “The Wellkeeper", A young adult fantasy/adventure. As an artist, she has worked on stories for “Tellos”, “The Perhapanauts” and “The Mice Templar” for Image comics, “Star Mage” and “White Chapel” for IDW Publishing, “Atomic Robo” for Red 5 Comics, and is the co creator, co writer and illustrator for the series“Carpe Noctem” for Hashtag Comics. Recently, Dee became the artist of Sabrina Pandora’s long-running webcomic,“Giant Girl Adventures”, and in 2017, began her current webcomic, "Finding Dee. "Finding Dee" is the hilarious and heartwarming webcomic about the trials and tribulations of trying to make it as a cartoonist while coming out as transgender in your 40s. Welcome Dee, it's so good to have you on the show.

Dee Fish: 2:39

Thank you, it's great to be here.

Alex Iantaffi: 2:41

So you are so creative and do so many things, as it's very clear from your bio. Any favorite projects that you want to share with the listeners for gender stories or Yeah, anything that you want to talk about in terms of your creative work to begin with?

Dee Fish: 3:00

It's everything really, I, you know, I'm really proud of most of the stuff that I've worked on. I think that the Finding Dee strips are probably the best that they've been, I've been really trying to get a little better artistically every year. I work we do a new page of Giant Girl adventures that run every Friday. So yeah, finding Dee runs every Wednesday, giant girl runs every Friday. And on top of that, I have a day job and occasional freelance work. So I am very, very busy. I'm also working on a series of Werewolf novels because I don't have enough to do in my life. And I got really bored in COVID. So I took on a lot of little projects, but I've got a ton of things going at any given moment. And, you know, it's for me, it's often a thing of all I'm ever talking about, like on social media is what project I'm working on. It's like, that's my life. I

Alex Iantaffi: 4:00

that makes sense. I saw that you're writing werewolves novels, and I was so intrigued. How did that idea. I'm kind of really curious about that.

Dee Fish: 4:10

Okay. The first novel is called lycanthropy. And the single girl, it's running on my Patreon right now a chapter at a time. I'm actually currently writing the sixth book in the series. And the whole idea actually started in my head about six years ago or so once I when I after coming out as trans and also noticing how much of the stories that I kind of congregated around or that's not the right word isn't, whatever. It's a lot of the stories that were it's a perfectly Cromulent word. A lot of the stories that I found myself the most interested in were stories about transformation about you know, people and characters that undergo, you know, mental and physical transformations. And so I've always loved like werewolves and stuff like that. And, but I've also never liked a lot of the tropes about them. And so I've been questioning those tropes for years, like, you know, you don't ever turn on the news and hear about a wild wolf that just went on a murder spree. No, they're just animals that hunt. And so I'm like, Well, why are werewolves constantly going on murder sprees? It's that didn't make sense to me. So I was like, I had all these ideas in my head and so about six years ago So I had, I was starting laser hair removal, and very self conscious about about that. And in my brain that combined with these questions I've always asked about the genre kind of formed a single scene in my mind, of a young woman who goes on a date, who, you know, is basically wanting, you know, this, she, she goes on a date, she brings the she brings the person home with her, and she's super nervous, and she gets so nervous that she transforms mid date and the guy goes running, screaming. Um, with the whole caveat being is that the person was never actually in any danger. It's like now it's just a thing that happens. And that's it. I had one scene in my head, and it sat there for years and years. And I was like, maybe I'll make it as a comic. Maybe I'll make it as you know, a comic strip, and I'll change this, but I had the seed of an idea. And that's it. That was all I had in my head. And years later, later, I was taking a shower, and it occurred to me what the plot would revolve around would be the core idea of the plot revolved when I came up when I thought of the idea, okay, how did she become a werewolf? Ah, her ex boyfriend did that to her. And now he's coming back into her life. Nice. That's a plot. That's something that I did. And as soon as I did that, it was on October of 2020, we were in the middle of you know, everything was locked down. I was at home I was already working on giant girl with Sabrina, which is those pages are really complicated and dense art pages, they take me a long time to do. I was doing finding dee, there was no way I could take on another comic art project. But I had been wanting to dip my toes into just pure prose writing for a long time. I had kind of played around doing a whole thing Star Trek fanfiction with my friend, Sabrina, where we do it kind of like role playing style. But without the dice, we write little Star Trek stories. And I got really, really, I enjoyed it. So I was like, Oh, well, I really just like just writing. And I had the idea, I started forming the characters, you know, and it's something of a spoiler. But I'm also because I'm a huge Star Trek fan. I'm also a big fan of stories that have very heavy metaphor to them. So it's one of those things where a lot of my experiences as a transgender woman found them found their way into my cisgendered female werewolf character, in terms of dealing with body image dysmorphia staff. Deal, and but more than anything dealing with the perception of the world versus the reality. The idea that I took for the whole books metaphor in the beginning was that, you know, you have this idea of, you know, your main character is a werewolf, well, what does that mean? Well, that means what pop culture thinks that means, but what if that doesn't line up? And I'm like, wow, that's, that's something I can go off of, because what if the reality of being a werewolf for her is absolutely nothing like what she would have expected from pop culture. You know, she doesn't turn into a ravening beast, she doesn't go off on these, you know, mindless killing, killing things, she, she tends to stay home and order a big bucket of fried chicken and just, you know, be really sad because she doesn't know how to tell her best friends. And so it's stuff like that, where, you know, she spends more time worrying about what people are going to think then, you know, worrying that she is going to become that thing that everyone thinks that's what that is. It's a lot of metaphor. And once I did that first book, I kind of went nuts. And I just kept writing and writing and writing. And the first book, I'm running on Patreon, just kind of like an extra version of beta testing to a certain degree, see what people think. I'm planning on launching it as an actual printed book and downloadable this summer. And you know, every few months after that a new book as soon as they're finished with the editing process, I'll be able to drop because I've already got five of them in the can and yeah, like anything at all became way more complicated, the more I went more mythology and weirdness, and it started as basically an idea for a rom com and it turned into this big, big epic thing. I don't know what to do with but but just keep writing it.

Alex Iantaffi: 10:15

That sounds amazing. And, and you're such a prolific writer. I mean, you said you're on the sixth book, and you start in fall of 2020. That's a lot of books to write in a short amount of time. I'm impressed.

Dee Fish: 10:27

And they're there. They're bulky to most, most of them, two, three, four and five are all about 50 chapters give or take nice? Well, I just yeah, a stream of consciousness writer very much. So

Alex Iantaffi: 10:41

I love that I'm very similar in my writing. So I can relate before I know it this way more pages than I ever intended to write. And it's an easy thing to do, at least for me, I'm and I love what you said about, you know, werewolves and transformations and being trans and big fantasy fan as well. And I think a lot of trans people can relate to being really drawn to this idea, a of transformation, but B also all of this kind of conflict between how you feel internally and how you present externally and how people read you and societal conventions, right? And there can be so much of that in fantasy. And so, yes, I wonder which, you know, you've already mentioned some of the tropes, like challenging this trope that werewolves are gonna go into killing spree. But which other tropes are you kind of turning upside down in this series

Dee Fish: 11:36

that one of the bigger ones I'm playing with is definitely body acceptance. That's a major factor in it, because my main character now has to deal with the, you know, I made I made her tall so that I could relate my own personal experiences. But you know, she has the body hair issue, that literally every time she transforms that it's not just the full moon, it's anytime she gets overly emotional. It happens. And one of the ideas that I always drove me nuts in werewolf movies is where you have characters that had like blonde highlights and streaks and nice bangs, and then they turn into a giant wolf. And then their hair cut comes back.

Alex Iantaffi: 12:19

Yes, I've always been by that too,

Dee Fish: 12:22

or the hair goes sucked back into their body with the power of reversing film. So know if she transforms by, you know, in the next morning, when she turns back to normal, she's got to deal with a couple of pounds worth of, of shed body hair, it just all comes off. And she's like, she'll wake up in bed, like, the hair in her mouth and everything. She doesn't lose that, like she turns into more of a tradition, it's more of a traditional like wolfman style werewolf rather than an actual full size wall. So I wanted to keep them bipedal because they also maintain their intelligence in my book, their personality, so you can't have conversations. And I wanted to do that I'm like, I wanted to play with the conventions and be like, no, no, they're my main characters are going to have full on trend conversations and casual scenes, while transformed, especially as the series goes on. And most of the protagonists are werewolves. So you know, there'll be having lunch, because it just happens to be that day, or whatever, and, you know, little things like that weird accommodations that I had to make for my wardrobe, being tall, you know, not being able to find certain outfits, I could relate that to her and finding outfits that she could keep wearing after she transformed and not just tear through them. A lot of it, again, is the perception. It's, it's dealing with that in yourself as well in saying, you know, this is the physicality of this aspect of myself and learning to accept aspects of that as well. Um, you know, I'm transgender, that means no matter what I do in terms of hormones, or surgery, there are certain things I cannot physically change. I can't make myself shorter, I can't change, you know, the, the width of my shoulders or anything, that the things that I'm so self conscious about, you know. So I tried to put some of that into my character of learning to accept the things that she couldn't really change, but also learning how to control the things that she could influence through her behavior and through her decisions. Yeah, it's, I love the idea of the metaphors and I think a big part of that is that, you know, as a transgender woman, that's all we had, for the longest time. It's, this is a very, it's not like it's a new thing. We've been around forever all of recorded history. And before recorded history, there have been transgender people or however the term was for that in history, but we've not had the language in modern culture in the modern cultures world has not had the language for it. And as a result, we've only ever shown up as villains in pop culture, anything that comes up like that is, you know, some kind of villainous character, duplicitous character, and that's been the the negative stereotype. So we didn't have really good metaphors. So we a lot of us, I know for myself, and I've got a number of friends, We clung to the metaphors that we could find that seemed like it fit. And anything that was positive and even remotely tangentially, you know, trans friendly and usually it was never all that friendly, it was always still usually the butt of a joke. But if you figure out a way to see yourself in these things that are metaphorical about transformation, because the the metaphors about transformation are the only times when it was positive. Otherwise, it was almost always exclusively a negative thing. I didn't see a I mean, the I think the first time I'd ever seen a positive portrayal of a trans character in media was John Lithgow In The World According to Garp when I was a kid and my brain exploded, and I'm like, I can't tell anybody in my house what I'm feeling about this movie right now. You know, then it was like I was in art school when I was introduced to the anime Ranma grandma one half, and I'm like, yes. But what, it's the kind of thing that it always popped up in like American comics. But it always been that one off issue of oh, this character gets magically transformed into a girl. And let's bait let's poke fun at that for a while. You know, growing up my generation generations before my generation, and a good chunk of them afterwards didn't have any kind of positive representation of that kind of a character. I did choose very specifically to make my protagonist in the series cisgender. However, because I didn't, I wanted to make sure that the the core of it was about it. That's coming, compounding two issues, I knew that there is definitely the story of a transgender werewolf to tell as well. And that is happening in the series, because there's a ton of characters. So I do introduce a transgender wolf character, who's you know, approaching puberty when the book starts when the series starts. So I get to, through her, explore the exact same idea from a different perspective, but also add some of the Fanciful elements into it as well, to create problems that don't exist, you know, to, to get to give the character a little bit extra to have to work through like, for example, my werewolves all by basically kind of have healing abilities. How does medication, how does medication work when you have a healing ability that negates it? And what does that do to your sense of self?

Alex Iantaffi: 18:16

Oh, that's fascinating, because now I'm thinking, How do hormones work for trans werewolves? What's gonna happen? How would like surgical interventions work? Right? That's the whole like...

Dee Fish: 18:28

Yeah. What, when, when a certain chunk of your body can grow back? Exactly. Oh, what I thought I'd think about I'm like, What a terrible concept. I'm like, Oh, my God, if I became a werewolf based on the rules of my narrative, when certain anatomy pieces grow back that I have worked quite hard to get rid of.

Alex Iantaffi: 18:45

This sounds like it might go from fantasy to horror very quickly, at least for us trans folks. I was like, that sounds like it felt

Dee Fish: 18:52

very scary. And I like I do play with I do play with the genres. Yes. It's a werewolf story. So there's some degree of horror to it. But it's, it's much less a horror than it is just a kind of a fantasy. bit more of a urban fantasy style story, a little bit of rhombic, a little bit of rom com a little bit of comedy, a little bit of horror, I am not a huge fan of saying anything is one genre that just bores me, I don't want to just be like, No, it must be this, because that's the genre that I've stuck to No, I want to tell different kinds of stories.

Alex Iantaffi: 19:25

Absolutely. When telling different talking about telling different kinds of stories, and going across genres. Let's talk about Finding Dee, which is your web, you know, and yeah, let's talk about how that idea came about and why it's important to you. I mean, I'm assuming there is a piece around representation, right, and visibility, which you were already starting to talk about that Why create Finding Dee. And what does that mean to you as a trans artist to come out later in life?

Dee Fish: 19:58

When I first started when I first came out, I was working on Dandy & Company. The other comic that you described earlier was so it's a wacky fun, you know, Looney Tunes, meets duck tails meets peanuts, kind of comic strip, talking animals, all kinds of fun stuff. And I enjoyed working on it, and I hadn't ever really thought much about it, except for the fact that I appeared in dandy and company as the cartoon it's like the strip would break the fourth wall and the characters would complain about the story line. Like the main character is very much cut from that kind of Bugs Bunny when he would have a smart aleck personality. So he wouldn't be like, um, so why am I not in the strips this much all the supporting characters? What's up with that my name on the strip. So the character would come in and give me a hard time as a running ongoing joke. So I actually came out in the strip to the character who showed up asking why they weren't in the comic enough that week, and then looking up at me going, wait, what? And I'm explaining the concept. And they're like, Okay, so you're a girl. And your name Dee. I, none of that explains why I'm not in the strip enough. And that was that was the gag. But that's for a good chunk of people. That's how I came out and people who weren't on my social media or weren't close friends. That's how I came out, I came out a cartoon version of myself that I had been drawing as a tertiary background character in my other comic for years. So I was still drawing that I was still working on the Wellkeeper. And I started a blog. I'm like, Well, I'm gonna do a blog, a lot of people are, all the kids these days are the blog. And, you know, I'm 41, I just came out, just discovered that was actually the national average when I came out for people coming out. Yeah, which was very, very strange to me. But it made sense. When we had moved recently as starting fresh, and I was in a situation to do so. And I had a lot of support from my partner, Heidi, who, like me, we had started dating years earlier, but she knew about this from date, date one, we talked about this on the first day of I wasn't sure I you know, I was still very hesitant to accept the idea, largely based on physicality factors and acceptance, no one would accept me. And I'm huge. So I'm never going to quote unquote, pass and all these things. You know, it took me a long time to realize I was just putting roadblocks up in my head. So I created this blog that I called Finding Dee and it was just about writing about what was what I was thinking about what was happening in my day, the obstacles I was facing the, you know, the the jerky looks and all that negativity that you deal with. And that's what it turned out to be it was post after post of venting negativity, and there are some people they need to do that. That's how they cope, they they vent their negativity, they put down these things that hurt them and give them anxiety, and they it alleviates them in telling that story. I am the exact opposite kind of person. That ramps it up for me that intensifies my anxiety, that intensifies my anger and an angry situation. Having it having to retell that story. So it wasn't working. I stepped away from the blog. Meanwhile, I had friends, the ones that have stuck by me, who kept saying, oh, you know, you should do a comic about this. You know, this is really interesting. You know that, you know, you're going through this change in your life, and you're such a different person now and right, talk to you. It's like that, you know, I had people that are always you know, oh, they're I never I never would have guessed this in a million years. But on the same token, it also doesn't surprise me at all. You always seem like you were holding something back and I was having all these people tell me over and over again. You should make a comic out of your experiences coming out as trans you should do a comic about that. Sure comic about that. Um, and that's literally the first comic strip I did was me going fine. I'm gonna do a comic about it. I'm gonna do a bleeping comic about it. Oh, wait, I can curse in this one. Because my other comics had all been all ages. So then I'm like, well fighting these about me and I curse So cartoon DS get a curse. Love it. And which I didn't think to ask him the beginning about the the rating for this. So I've been censoring myself.

Alex Iantaffi: 24:46

Here. Good. We have some episodes where we curse some episodes where we've gone to put a little warning if this cursing it's all good.

Dee Fish: 24:53

I won't worry if I let one slip. It's a natural part. It's a natural part of my being. So yeah, I was like let me try doing a comic about this. And a comic strip. I love all kinds of comics. I love doing comic books short term, like superhero comic books and adventure and fantasy comic books, you know, dramatic graphic novels, but I love comic strips. I've been wanting to make comic strips since I was a little little kid up. I created the characters that I used for Dandy and company when I was eight years old in grade school, and I've been drawing them for over 40 years now. These characters are a decade old. Are that my stepson. Um, and so I mean, I love comic strips, and I'm like, but if I do it as if I, if I do them as a comic strip, it's not a commitment to a series, like, I'm gonna do a graphic novel, and it's gonna have to be x pages. A strip is just a one off bag. So I'll just draw strip. And by dragging as a strip, if I lean on as a humor comic, I can try and find a punch line, find humor in these situations that are stressing me out. find humor in the dysphoria find humor in the app, the time, over an hour, it would take for me to prepare to leave the house for something like toilet paper, I wouldn't just go to these days, I will just wake up in the morning, throw a t shirt on and go to the store to get groceries if I need to. I don't give. Yeah, but it took me a long time to get there. It was early days, you know, especially when I you know, it was pre hormones, pre hair removal, any of that stuff. So I was very, very self conscious. These days, I've been on hormones. For years, I've had sub certain surgeries, I've had hair removal, I'm much more comfortable in my skin, each one of those steps makes me more comfortable in my skin. But back then I wasn't. So things like that were the material for a strip, but find the punch line in it find the joke. And more often than not, each strip had some degree of humor, because my thinking was, I treated it less like an experiment less like a comic and more like an experiment in self therapy. If I can, if I can figure out a way for Cartoon me to smile and laugh through this traumatic scenario, maybe real me can deal with it better. And over time, it it's working. It's working. For me, it has worked for me in a lot of respects. And figuring out that, you know, so long as they're just a negative interaction with someone that doesn't end in physical violence, or the police being called, then it's a situation I can find a way to turn into something vaguely humorous. There's some kernel of humor in any of these situations, even if it's just the exacerbation and frustration of the repeating cycles of that waitress that wants to come up to the table. And when me and Heidi are eating and go, Okay, here's a refill on your on your soda, sir, and yell it yell just that word at the top of their lungs. And how that situation rectified is when dinner was ready. It said once you get the car warmed up, and I'm like, It's summer, go get the car warmed up, you're gonna don't say anything. This is the only good pizza place in like 100 miles. Just go get the car. 10 minutes later, she comes out the problem itself, we will never have her again as a server, and we never get

Alex Iantaffi: 28:48

good. I'm so glad you're supportive partner in those kinds of situations that can be so stressful and hurtful.

Dee Fish: 28:56

I don't think I would have had the strength to come out had I not been with Heidi. There are some people like in my family who have made assumptions that Heidi is the enabler here. And at no point in our relationship, has she ever enabled me or pushed me on this direction? She just let me experiment let me take one step at a time. And discover who I am. Not just who I was, but who I wanted to be. Which is yeah, what led to the title of the strip being Finding Dee? Yeah, there was nothing about the strip that was a calculated business decision. Otherwise, I would have called it something else. That didn't sound so much like Finding Dory and Finding Nemo. Yes. I would have sat down and done model sheets of me and Heidi and our dog Po from the beginning instead of working up a model sheet, almost a year into the strip. So those early strips, like you can kind of see I'm making it up as I go. I'm figuring out the style. I'm figuring out what we're going to look like. And now we are straight up cartoon characters in the current strips. The models are very well defined. They don't really look much like us in a literal sense, but they've kind of looked like what we feel like. I mean, it works. I have been both of us have been literally picked out by people in town because they read the comic. That's amazing. Then they've seen us in public and go your Dee and Heidi. I read the comic. I'm like, you don't see photos of us but you recognized us from my wonky drawing. Writing. Okay, that's, that's the thing that's happening,

Alex Iantaffi: 30:37

while your drawings are pretty amazing, and I love what you said about kind of making it up as you were, as you went along, because I feel so much of transition, honestly, at least for me, was kind of making it up as I went along, especially in the beginning, right? Who am I? What do I want to do? How do I want to dress? How do I want to present? Yeah, you know, and how that changes over time, as you get more confident, like you said, you know, at the beginning, there was so much heartache, and then you're like, I'm just gonna go to the store, you know, and not spend like, a lot of time getting ready or trying to kind of cater to other people's expectations, which is wonderful. And I love what you said, as well about Finding Dee being like self therapy, I think that creating can be such a healing thing. And I wonder if you've heard from other trans women, especially about what Finding Dee has meant to them. Or if you've ever kind of had interactions with kind of trans men about what the cartoon means to them.

Dee Fish: 31:39

I have, it was something that I never would have expected, I never would have given a second thought to when I started this. Again, it's just this thing that I thought was going to be this little fun experiment that I never thought would be the comic. That's the thing I've been working on for six, six plus years now regularly with a weekly strip. I've got you know, I think I've got 300 of these things in the can by now. And I never thought of it beyond that. So when I started getting messages real early on, from other transgender people, male, female, non binary, all expressing I saw myself in that story in that sequence in that one joke. A lot of people it turns out that a lot of the experiences that in my brain were trans specific, were just universal. Fresh, like I would be frustrated going and searching for clothes. And here I am a 41 learning about how that crazy women's clothes sizes are. There's no universal standard from garment to garment. And I had lived the first 40 years of my life, you know, presenting male somewhat against my will. I was damned easy shopping. You know, the waist size of those pants were measured in inches. Yes, that's it. You know, now you literally every store has a different measuring guide, and you have to try everything on and make you feel bad about it. And these are things that I discovered at 41 That to me were relevant story, but then I'd have you know, cisgender women say oh my god, yes, say my hate that that sucks so bad. Or I did one real early on. It was the first trip I did that blew up and it was about me. I have started with me dressed as like Tomb Raider slash Indiana Jones going on this adventure in this like, hidden, hidden caverns of doom and mystery, all to find the Holy Grail of a bra that is both cute, fits, and is cheap. Oh, yeah. And that one struck a nerve. And that's when I realized that the experiences I was telling were very universal. But yeah, I've had a lot of people who come up to me at comic book conventions, or who have messaged me, who have said things that are honestly humbling to me, they put me into they put into a very, very real perspective that this comic that I'm drawing that I originally didn't think of as anything other than therapy for myself has been therapy for other people. That it has a meaning that I have. You know, and I hate to say it in terms that make it sound lofty, but I have touched people with this and it's not something I was prepared to do. Emotionally it freaks me out a little bit because I was very much like a no, I'm just the haha look funny drawing. Um, you know, I wasn't prepared for that. But I have heard that a lot I've had, I've had parents come up to me at events, we vended at both comic conventions and at pride events. And we've had parents come up to me and they flip through and they're like, oh, my gosh, this is amazing. You know, my kid is telling me that they're trans and I, I would love to show this to them. The number one question I always get asked, Is this appropriate? And I'm like, on the covers of all the books that I've done, it always says contains naughty words. But that's it. That's the only caveat that I'd say. I'd say that's well. There's cursing in there because I curse It's part of my life. And it's a part of the experience. And I've kind of gotten to take gotten to the point of saying, you know, as harsh of a reality as it is, if you have a child who is coming out as transgender, they're going to have to learn how to navigate the F word, because they're going to be hearing it weaponized against them a lot.

Alex Iantaffi: 35:55

Absolutely. And, you know, as my kids would say, that probably those kids are probably heard much worse, in middle school already, or even in school nowadays. So I don't mean, the curious thing is necessarily off putting to young people. But I think, you know, I love what you said about just you were creating this just for yourself, but then it did touch people, which I'm not surprised because of representation is so important, right? You just had for people kind of, I think we're close in age of our generation that really wasn't representation. Right? And so to I don't know, for you, but for me, every time I see, trans representation is like, my heart grows, like five sizes, right? And then I want to recommend it to people, because I know that people are looking for resources. You know, even even if it's just a cartoon in air quotes, it's so much more than a cartoon for people. I think it's seen themselves. Yes, seeing themselves mean so much to so many people.

Dee Fish: 36:59

Yeah, it's once I realized the scope of it, and it's something Heidi helped me with in terms of our everyday life. Like, the first night, after I'd come out to everybody, like everyone who knew me knew the first night, we went out to dinner, she helped me get dressed, she put my makeup on. But we went out to dinner, and then we walked around Walmart for a while. And I, I deal with a lot of social anxiety, I don't like to say I have social anxiety, because I feel like using that terminology gives gives the anxiety more power. I deal with social anxiety. This is a mental trick for me, I try not to use the terminology of saying I, I have depression, I have social anxiety, I've been diagnosed with them. I know I, I'm dealing with them. It's a phrasing that I'm going a little tangential. But it's a part of the overall story. It's, I try not to say it that way. Because a I don't want to define that as a part of my identity. I don't want to and I don't want it to be an excuse for my behavior. If I'm dealing with a lot of them. I have to have, I it's important to me that I didn't want to have to change my life that much to the degree that I want to still do the things that Heidi and I have always done. We go to karaoke religiously. It's our it's our crack. You know, we love to go out to eat. There are you know, neither of us are skinny for a reason. You know, we like to go out, we're having a nice date day, this Sunday coming up, and we're looking forward to it, I am very visible. And I realized that that really what that visibility is important. Because all anyone ever sees of Heidi and I are just a couple going out and doing normal things. We go to the grocery store, we go to karaoke, we go to the restaurants, we're on the Art Council, where you know, we go to the, we do all these different things in our town. And another thing that became kind of humbling was that I was the only transgender out person that I knew in our little city here in very rural Western Pennsylvania. And I lost track of how many that we have encountered since I came out. So I have to kind of you know, there's a party that wants to say I have nothing to do with that. But I don't, I'm not a big fan of self delusion in that regard. And especially when it's hurtful to yourself on purpose, and that is I am partly responsible for that I am very, very visible. And just like my general life and my strip is all about just presenting. This is me. I'm just a person. I'm a dork. I love I love cartoons and comics and you know, the plate you'll find me more and more often than anywhere else on the toy aisle at at our local Walmart or in the graphic novel section of the Ollie's across the street from them. You know, that's my that's what I'm into. That's my thing. And that hasn't changed when I came out and just expanded the number of toys I felt comfortable buying. So yeah, record. There's that side of me that has to remind myself that the representation aspect of the strip and is just As important as the the way we live our everyday lives. I don't consider myself overtly activist it in the sense that I'm not walking around kicking in doors. I'm just walking through them, I'm just trying to exist the same way I did before. And have that be a thing that people understand is just the way it is. That's just the reality. I am this person, I am the I'm gonna come in and eat and, you know, I still get crappy looks, we still get, you know, dirty stares from people and, you know, angry glares. But I noticed them less and less. or, more accurately, I dwell on them less than less, I still have that mentality of situational awareness. You know, I can go to the bathroom by myself these days, but I don't ever go without my purse and my phone. So if I have to have my ID on me, and if I have to call for help, I can. Yeah. But I'm still aware of that. But I don't. I don't walk in like I'm committing a crime anymore. You know, because I was so terrified for the longest time of what other people's expectations were. And that's gotten terrible. I mean, I came out in January of 2016. Of all the years to come out. I came out in the year that this exploded. Yeah, the year that the bathroom hysteria started. Yeah, the year that it became a political talking point to the nth degree I came out then. And it's just one of those things. I'm like, Are you kidding me? Really? I waited 41 years, and it just happened to coincide with Trump. Yeah. And everything that's come out of the political machines, trying to demonize transgender people and turn us into, you know, the world's new Boogeyman. Yeah. And it's, it's insanely frustrating. You know, I know that realistically speaking, you know, there's a part of me that wishes I could go back in time and tell myself to come out later. But I also know the world wasn't there yet. You know, would have been that much harder to do anything, I wouldn't be in the position I'm in now. I'm in a comfortable position. You know, my, my, I have a day job. My boss met me after coming out. So there's no issues with that. whatsoever. She's been remarkably supportive of everything in that regard. It's a that's not a factor of anything I worry about. And I know if I find new job, I'm gonna throw myself right back out there. You know, I know that when I came out, I actually, I actually got my rates cut by my then main client, ironically, to the national. Ironically, I got my rates cut to the national average of women versus men's salaries. It was kind of amazing. Right away, I suddenly was worth less to somebody that I've been working with for decades. Yeah. It's so weird how, you know, you don't think about the pink tax until you have to pay it. But it got its real.

Alex Iantaffi: 43:54

Oh, absolutely. So Real. And let's talk, you know, we're gonna talk about that visibility a little bit more, because Trans Day of visibility is coming up. And you literally came out under in a very visible way as a comic artist that's right later in life in this very visible way. In the cartoon that you were drawing at the time, and what was it like to kind of do it in such a public way? And some way and what does this that visibility mean to you now?

Dee Fish: 44:27

I'm doing it very public in my comics, and then changing the focus of at least the main comic I was working on to be about that was something that was kind of a double edged sword. On one hand, it was very empowering. Made me feel like you know, okay, I'm telling a story that's worth telling. I'm telling a story that only I can tell from this point of view. And people seem to enjoy it. So I started putting more and more emphasis on finding d as it started to kind of blowing up on social media and people started paying much more attention and I'm like, okay, wasn't what I was planning on being the artistic focus, but I'm going to put my artistic focus on this project for now. And it being I'd already been like, before moving up to Pennsylvania, we lived in Florida for years and I was a regular mainstay of the comic book convention circuit in Florida. I went to all the major shows. I was an invited guest to a good chunk of the biggest shows where I wasn't paying for my table anymore. I'd become at least moderately successful enough to get my foot in the door in that regard. And so, you know, I very early on got to encounter a good degree of jealousy from people and a lot of backstabbing, I'd find out from other from friends that from shows I wasn't going to that I was a topic of conversation, where people were accusing me of this my entire lifestyle being a publicity stunt just to sell these comics. That's rough. And, um, and it's one of those things where it's like, yeah, that's why I have submitted myself to taking going to fit to a mandatory therapy so that I could get hormones and surgery legally go through the hoops it takes to change my name. I'm getting laser hair removal, getting chunks of my anatomy removed. I'm going through the idea that every time I leave the house, I have to worry whether or not somebody is going to accuse me of a crime or try to get me to say nothing of just getting stairs getting screamed at when I come out of the bathroom in public. Yeah, I did all of those. Because I knew one day I was going to be on the gender stories podcast. You know, it's like, really are you? It's as ridiculous as the people that claim that transgender people are doing this simply to to get into restrooms and assault women. Oh, my God, like the doors like the doors are guarded now. Why on earth would anyone go through the trouble to make themselves this much more visible when you if somebody wants first off anything? Anyone that they would say and oh, they're gonna do this and they get to restrooms and assault women. The Assault is already illegal.

Alex Iantaffi: 47:22

And assaults are already happening. There's plenty of cis men already can freely walk into women's bathroom and assault people. So it's so so bad happens

Dee Fish: 47:33

all the time. Yeah, what they're what they what they've turned into a political talking point never happens. Exactly. I think I think that there's a grand total of like, two instances in the last 20 years that has been that has been recorded. Statistically speaking, that's non existent. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, but, you know, the idea is enough that legislation needs to be passed so that I don't get to exist anymore. Yeah. You know, and it's just, it's an insane time right now for this. So, for me, my visibility, my being being out there, putting my comic book out there promoting my comic book, just like it's any other comic book, promoting it and putting it out there selling it at shows, you know, doing whatever interviews I can get to help promote it the same way I would for any other comic and the way I have four other comics. You know, that's just, I'm just my life has been a matter of moving forward. That's it. I changed the road I was on, you know, I pick the road that is both bumpier and smoother at the same time. It's bumpy or to traverse, but the car rides so much better. I love that. That's a great description. Thank you. It's like I got my shots fixed. Yeah. Yeah, it's that visibility to me is really important because it benefits not just me, but everyone else who's following after me. And I have to under end, you know, maybe someone will accuse me of being egotistical, I don't know. But at the end of the day, I can't sit here and pretend that I don't have a certain degree of an impact with what I do. The numbers may not be massive, I may not be you know, the biggest hit out there by any stretch of the imagination, in terms of being a fiscal success with this, but the comic is finding people and people are discovering the comic, and they are, it is helping people understand who they are and who they want to be. I have had people tell me that they have found the strength to come out because of a comic strip I drew, I took maybe an hour and a half on helped change the course of someone's life. And that is that is weighty. And that is the kind of thing that makes me want to curl up in a blanket and be like, I don't want to face the world because this is a little bit too big. You know, but I've also dealt with, you know, I've had people who used to get commissions from me at comic conventions, you know, tell me that they've torn up every piece of art that they spent money on buying from me because I discussed them. I've had people that smile to my face at comic book conventions, talk shit about me behind my back and try to make me look bad and You know, there's both sides of that story visibility is visibility is a double edged sword. Because the more visible you are, the more you have to absorb. So the more hits that the more hits that will come your way the The brighter the light on you, you know, the more moths are going to come after you, the more mosquitoes are going to land on. Yeah.

Alex Iantaffi: 50:58

And it's it's such a Yeah, absolutely such a terrible double edged sword because like you said that visibility can also really illuminate the path for some people, right? And really, that's what some, you know, transforms need to like come out or to discover themselves. And at the same time, the more visible we are, the more makes us a target, as well for for people who have the exact opposite agenda. Absolutely. What is some I know we're kind of coming close to the end of our time. But I'm curious about what would you say to trans folks, and especially trans women who might be reluctant to come out later in life, I know that I've often heard people, you know, and I came out in my 30s, as well. But I've worked with people and I've seen people in community say, you know, I'm too old to come out, you know, it's too late. But as somebody who has come out later in life, what would you say to them?

Dee Fish: 52:01

I would say, you know, obviously, you need to come out, as soon as it's something you're ready to do, I wouldn't ever try to push someone into doing that. But I would say that, you know, in spite of, you know, technical stuff, I wish I would have come out sooner, I wish I would have accepted this part of myself sooner, and stop throwing obstacles in my way to say, this is why I can't do this, this is why I can't do that. It's, it's such a weird statement, the best I can usually do is just try to tell my own story. That way, I'm not telling somebody what to do. Because I feel really uncomfortable with that idea. Especially because I've had people especially younger people come to me and ask me these questions. And I will never straight up, you know, I'm never gonna say this is what you should do. Because then all of a sudden, that label of, you know, our groomers get to patched and terrible

Alex Iantaffi: 53:01

lady. Yeah, absolutely.

Dee Fish: 53:03

You know, and, but I'll tell my story, I'll be you know, I'll tell people that, when did I know, I don't remember ever not knowing I knew, you know, it's, it's inherent, we have an idea of what we are and what we are supposed to be, our gender is something that we are aware of, on a level that can't be described in the same way that a cisgender man or woman has never had to debate that they are a man or a woman and, you know, if they're, if they're, if their reproductive organs had been removed, or they've been in an accident, and they lost everything between their legs, they would still know what they were, it doesn't have to do with it doesn't have to do with the package, it has to do with who you are, we have this inherent sense of knowledge of it. And I knew right away from a very, very young age, for maybe, that what I was being told I was was not what I knew I was I knew right away, and I tried expressing it from a very young age. And it was not accepted. You know, I was I was made fun of at home I was laughed at, I learned how to put that into a little container and keep it locked away and not talk about it and not, you know, bring it up, lock that stuff inside. And then you know, you grow up, you grow up and you kept that in a box for a really long time to the degree that you're not thinking about it anymore, but for every now and again, that little pop culture leak over that movie character that makes you feel a little uncomfortable in a familiar way and you're like No, no, I can't do that. You know, and then puberty hits and here I am I sprout up to six to six three. You know, I'm high to high to hundreds in my weight. I'm physically built on wide, wide built chest and you know you look at yourself in the mirror and you just feel like you know betrayed by your own body as you go through this puberty you know that's why I'm so I get the one thing I do get a little activity about is that we're there. You've got all these motions to try to suppress hormone blockers. I'm like that's like a that's a death sentence for a lot of people because what hormones What hormones do to our body is irreversible? Exactly. You know, I, I put a certain degree of effort, not a lot of effort into voice training. Because there is no amount of hormones that are going to change what testosterone did to my voice. You know, I liked the term, I liked the term of the idea that I, you know, I'm dealing with the effects of testosterone poisoning, and what it did to my body, it is irreversible. You know, there are certain things you can do surgically, but you can't change what that happened. Once it's happened, it's happened. And a huge chunk of us, a very large percentage of us knew really early on. Oh, yeah. And we may have had people trying to tell us, we were wrong, we may have tried telling ourselves we were wrong, because it would be so hard and you don't want to lose everything you've got, oh, I've got a job. I've got friends, I've got family, and I'm going to lose them. If I come out. I was terrified. I was terrified of, you know, walking, walking out, you know, into the world saying I'm a girl and I'm been huge, you know, and yeah, I always have somebody say, Oh, well, you know, there are really tall women in the WNBA. Or, or they'll say something like, you know, what about the Amazons? And I'm like, they're fictional. Thank you,

Alex Iantaffi: 56:55

I usually say model height. You know, when you're over six feet, your mother height.

Dee Fish: 57:01

You know, I'm like, I can point to like, what Gwendoline Christie is taller than me. Yay. I love Gwendoline Christie, don't get me wrong. But by and large, there's only one person in this entire region that I live in. That is the same height as I am that cisgender woman. That's it, I still tower over a lot of people, I tell her over a lot of men in this area. And so that made me self conscious. And that was a roadblock. And that's how I would that's how I tried to word it is that at the end of the day, passing is not the idea of passing, it just can be a very much a toxic mind work because it gets into your brain, that idea isn't important. It's being true to yourself, being who you know you are, is worth the external sources of stress that will come to you. Because at the end of the day, having the sense of confidence of I made this choice to embrace who I knew I always was removed a lot of the interior stress and at the end of the day, there is nothing that's going to tear you down more than the bad things you tell yourself far more than something somebody else is going to tell you. We do a lot of damage to ourselves. And by coming out, I took a lot of power from those voices. Yeah, I've got voices out in the world who are willing to tell you all kinds of messed up things, but I can't control that. I can show them they're wrong. By living my life my way by living my life and my truth and being out there and being being seen being visible and being noticed and, and telling my specific story. You know, through my comic, I can prove them wrong. But I can't change their mind right there in the moment. And it doesn't matter. You know, at the end of the day, I can't. I live 40 years of my life, trying to make other people comfortable. And, you know, seven years ago, I turned 41, which gives you an idea of my age. And you know, I have never once regretted that decision. I have regretted things that have happened. I have regretted other people's reactions, I have regretted learning things about other people that, you know, I've grown I've grown distant from a lot of a lot of people who just were never able to get comfortable with this. Yeah. And that's not my responsibility. Absolutely. I didn't remove myself from their lives. You know, I just, you know, you can only be true to yourself. And if this is your truth, it's the thing that embracing it can make you feel comfortable in a way that keeping it locked in a bottle can't Yeah, I can only tell people, I chose to embrace what I knew to be true in spite of the physical obstacles of my height, my size, the depth of my voice, you know, it's that, you know, a lot of things that can be, you know, adjusted over time with hormones and training and things like that to where it becomes more second nature. That's fine. That's all well good and fine. But none of those physical obstacles that I thought were the most Important thing in the world turned out to be very important at all, once I made the decision to be who I was who I knew I already was. Absolutely, that would be what I would tell somebody, I would tell them what it did for me.

Alex Iantaffi: 1:00:46

That's so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that with the gender stories, listeners. And my last question is usually, is there anything we have not talked about that you wanted to share?

Dee Fish: 1:00:59

I'm not really I mean, we talked about the werewolf books. I'm always excited to talk about those there. That's my big new toy. I can't wait for the first one to actually be out in print, because I've gotten a lot of really great feedback from folks on it, who really loved it. And I'm super excited about that. I'm still working on finding d weekly that runs every Wednesday at finding d comic.com. D finding d comic.com. runs every Wednesday new comics can find all find out all about everything going on all the weird little details I have told. I have told the story of my archy ectomy in the comic strip, I have told the story of my breast enhancement, which was just last year. But also I've told the stories of Oh, we got cats. And that's a huge cluster. They're adorable, but they make me bleed. So it's, it's about that it's about life. And you know, I would love more people to read it and spread the word. Right now. Through the comic company unlikely heroes studios, we are running a Kickstarter this week that ends on the 14th or the 13th. of February, for a color collection. We are currently at stretch goals now. So we made our initial goal, or trying to get stretch goals covered. And that's a collection of about 80 to 80 pages of comic strips and full color for the first time. In print that way for the first time, which I'm really excited about and that is at you HSUUH studios.com forward slash, kick it and then the number two, so you h studios.com. Forward slash kick it to wonder and that's the Kickstarter. That's the Kickstarter for the color collection of all the first strips.

Alex Iantaffi: 1:02:53

And I'll make sure that I put all of this links in the Episode Notes so that your listener can find all those links. And if people wanted to follow you on social media, or find your website, do you have any handles that they should look out for on Instagram or Twitter.

Dee Fish: 1:03:11

Most of them are just D fish or D Brisby. Fish like Facebook and Twitter and all that stuff. I don't make it hard to find me I try to make it as easy as possible. Also, all my social media is linked through the main website, which is the Tumblr page for which is finding v comic.com. Or just finding d.com I got both URLs they'll take you to the website and all the way at the bottom is all the links to my social media if you want to follow me I post all kinds of I got a Patreon where I do rough sketches and I show the the preview art for the next week strip and you get to see strips a week in advance and you can read up to I think currently I think 21 chapters of my first werewolf book are up there the first for free.

Alex Iantaffi: 1:04:02

That's exciting.

Dee Fish: 1:04:04

That's that's, that's patreon.com forward slash big pond comics, which you can also find that I got so many websites. The novel's website is lycanthropy. A and the single girl.com It's long but the book titles long

Alex Iantaffi: 1:04:20

works is very clear, very easy to find. Well, the it has been such a pleasure to have you on gender stories. Thank you so much for making the time to be interviewed today. And dear listeners. Until next episode, keep being true to yourself and thank you for listening. Thank you