March 20, 2023 • 64 mins
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
Instagram: GenderStories
Hosted by Alex Iantaffi
Music by Maxwell von Raven
Gender Stories logo by Lior Effinger-Weintraub
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Musical Intro (00:01):
There's a whole lot of things I want to tell you
about. Adventures dangerous andqueer. Some you can guess and
some I've only hinted at, soplease lend me an ear.
Narrator (00:26):
everyone has a relationship with gender. What's
your story? Hello and welcome toGender stories with your host,
Dr Alex Iantaffi.
Alex Iantaffi (00:35):
Hello and welcome to another episode gender
stories. I know I'm always superexcited but I truly am excited
to have another wonderful guestand I am here interviewing Dee
Fish who is a Pennsylvania basedcartoonist, illustrator and
graphic designer. As acartoonist, she is the creator
of the online comic strip,“Dandy & Company“. An all-ages
(00:58):
humor comic strip in the vein of“Looney Tunes” and “Peanuts”
surrounding the misadventures ofa dog and his boy that ran from
2001 to 2018. She is also thewriter and artist of the creator
owned comic book, “TheWellkeeper", A young adult
fantasy/adventure. As anartist, she has worked on
stories for “Tellos”, “ThePerhapanauts” and “The Mice
(01:23):
Templar” for Image comics, “StarMage” and “White Chapel” for IDW
Publishing, “Atomic Robo” forRed 5 Comics, and is the co
creator, co writer andillustrator for the series
“Carpe Noctem” for HashtagComics. Recently, Dee
became the artist of SabrinaPandora’s long-running webcomic,
(01:45):
“Giant Girl Adventures”, and in2017, began her current
webcomic, "Finding Dee. "FindingDee" is the hilarious and
heartwarming webcomic about thetrials and tribulations of
trying to make it as acartoonist while coming out as
transgender in your 40s. WelcomeDee, it's so good to have you on
the show.
Dee Fish (02:05):
Thank you, it's great to be here.
Alex Iantaffi (02:07):
So you are so creative and do so many things,
as it's very clear from yourbio. Any favorite projects that
you want to share with thelisteners for gender stories or
Yeah, anything that you want totalk about in terms of your
creative work to begin with?
Dee Fish (02:26):
It's everything really, I, you know, I'm really
proud of most of the stuff thatI've worked on. I think that the
Finding Dee strips are probablythe best that they've been, I've
been really trying to get alittle better artistically every
year. I work we do a new page ofGiant Girl adventures that run
(02:47):
every Friday. So yeah, findingDee runs every Wednesday, giant
girl runs every Friday. And ontop of that, I have a day job
and occasional freelance work.
So I am very, very busy. I'malso working on a series of
Werewolf novels because I don'thave enough to do in my life.
And I got really bored in COVID.
(03:07):
So I took on a lot of littleprojects, but I've got a ton of
things going at any givenmoment. And, you know, it's for
me, it's often a thing of allI'm ever talking about, like on
social media is what project I'mworking on. It's like, that's my
life. I
Alex Iantaffi (03:26):
that makes sense.
I saw that you're writingwerewolves novels, and I was so
intrigued. How did that idea.
I'm kind of really curious aboutthat.
Dee Fish (03:36):
Okay. The first novel is called lycanthropy. And the
single girl, it's running on myPatreon right now a chapter at a
time. I'm actually currentlywriting the sixth book in the
series. And the whole ideaactually started in my head
about six years ago or so once Iwhen I after coming out as trans
(04:00):
and also noticing how much ofthe stories that I kind of
congregated around or that's notthe right word isn't, whatever.
It's a lot of the stories thatwere it's a perfectly Cromulent
word. A lot of the stories thatI found myself the most
interested in were stories abouttransformation about you know,
(04:23):
people and characters thatundergo, you know, mental and
physical transformations. And soI've always loved like
werewolves and stuff like that.
And, but I've also never liked alot of the tropes about them.
And so I've been questioningthose tropes for years, like,
you know, you don't ever turn onthe news and hear about a wild
(04:43):
wolf that just went on a murderspree. No, they're just animals
that hunt. And so I'm like,Well, why are werewolves
constantly going on murdersprees? It's that didn't make
sense to me. So I was like, Ihad all these ideas in my head
and so about six years ago So Ihad, I was starting laser hair
removal, and very self consciousabout about that. And in my
(05:07):
brain that combined with thesequestions I've always asked
about the genre kind of formed asingle 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 homewith her, and she's super
(05:29):
nervous, and she gets so nervousthat she transforms mid date and
the guy goes running, screaming.
Um, with the whole caveat beingis that the person was never
actually in any danger. It'slike now it's just a thing that
happens. And that's it. I hadone scene in my head, and it sat
(05:50):
there for years and years. And Iwas like, maybe I'll make it as
a comic. Maybe I'll make it asyou know, a comic strip, and
I'll change this, but I had theseed of an idea. And that's it.
That was all I had in my head.
And years later, later, I wastaking a shower, and it occurred
(06:11):
to me what the plot wouldrevolve around would be the core
idea of the plot revolved when Icame up when I thought of the
idea, okay, how did she become awerewolf? Ah, her ex boyfriend
did that to her. And now he'scoming back into her life. Nice.
That's a plot. That's somethingthat I did. And as soon as I did
(06:31):
that, it was on October of 2020,we were in the middle of you
know, everything was lockeddown. I was at home I was
already working on giant girlwith Sabrina, which is those
pages are really complicated anddense art pages, they take me a
long time to do. I was doingfinding dee, there was no way I
(06:52):
could take on another comic artproject. But I had been wanting
to dip my toes into just pureprose writing for a long time. I
had kind of played around doinga whole thing Star Trek
fanfiction with my friend,Sabrina, where we do it kind of
like role playing style. Butwithout the dice, we write
little Star Trek stories. And Igot really, really, I enjoyed
(07:14):
it. So I was like, Oh, well, Ireally just like just writing.
And I had the idea, I startedforming the characters, you
know, and it's something of aspoiler. But I'm also because
I'm a huge Star Trek fan. I'malso a big fan of stories that
have very heavy metaphor tothem. So it's one of those
things where a lot of myexperiences as a transgender
(07:36):
woman found them found their wayinto my cisgendered female
werewolf character, in terms ofdealing with body image
dysmorphia staff. Deal, and butmore than anything dealing with
the perception of the worldversus the reality. The idea
that I took for the whole booksmetaphor in the beginning was
(07:59):
that, you know, you have thisidea of, you know, your main
character is a werewolf, well,what does that mean? Well, that
means what pop culture thinksthat 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 ifthe reality of being a werewolf
for her is absolutely nothinglike what she would have
expected from pop culture. Youknow, she doesn't turn into a
(08:23):
ravening beast, she doesn't gooff on these, you know, mindless
killing, killing things, she,she tends to stay home and order
a big bucket of fried chickenand just, you know, be really
sad because she doesn't know howto tell her best friends. And so
it's stuff like that, where, youknow, she spends more time
worrying about what people aregoing to think then, you know,
(08:45):
worrying that she is going tobecome that thing that everyone
thinks that's what that is. It'sa lot of metaphor. And once I
did that first book, I kind ofwent nuts. And I just kept
writing and writing and writing.
And the first book, I'm runningon Patreon, just kind of like an
(09:07):
extra version of beta testing toa certain degree, see what
people think. I'm planning onlaunching it as an actual
printed book and downloadablethis summer. And you know, every
few months after that a new bookas soon as they're finished with
the editing process, I'll beable to drop because I've
already got five of them in thecan and yeah, like anything at
all became way more complicated,the more I went more mythology
(09:29):
and weirdness, and it started asbasically an idea for a rom com
and it turned into this big, bigepic thing. I don't know what to
do with but but just keepwriting it.
Alex Iantaffi (09:41):
That sounds amazing. And, and you're such a
prolific writer. I mean, yousaid you're on the sixth book,
and you start in fall of 2020.
That's a lot of books to writein a short amount of time. I'm
impressed.
Dee Fish (09:53):
And they're there.
They're bulky to most, most ofthem, two, three, four and five
are all about 50 chapters giveor take nice? Well, I just yeah,
a stream of consciousness writervery much. So
Alex Iantaffi (10:07):
I love that I'm very similar in my writing. So I
can relate before I know it thisway more pages than I ever
intended to write. And it's aneasy thing to do, at least for
me, I'm and I love what you saidabout, you know, werewolves and
transformations and being transand big fantasy fan as well. And
I think a lot of trans peoplecan relate to being really drawn
(10:30):
to this idea, a oftransformation, but B also all
of this kind of conflict betweenhow you feel internally and how
you present externally and howpeople read you and societal
conventions, right? And therecan be so much of that in
fantasy. And so, yes, I wonderwhich, you know, you've already
mentioned some of the tropes,like challenging this trope that
(10:53):
werewolves are gonna go intokilling spree. But which other
tropes are you kind of turningupside down in this series
Dee Fish (11:02):
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 personalexperiences. But you know, she
has the body hair issue, thatliterally every time she
(11:22):
transforms that it's not justthe full moon, it's anytime she
gets overly emotional. Ithappens. And one of the ideas
that I always drove me nuts inwerewolf movies is where you
have characters that had likeblonde highlights and streaks
and nice bangs, and then theyturn into a giant wolf. And then
their hair cut comes back.
Alex Iantaffi (11:46):
Yes, I've always been by that too,
Dee Fish (11:48):
or the hair goes sucked back into their body with
the power of reversing film. Soknow if she transforms by, you
know, in the next morning, whenshe turns back to normal, she's
got to deal with a couple ofpounds worth of, of shed body
hair, it just all comes off. Andshe's like, she'll wake up in
bed, like, the hair in her mouthand everything. She doesn't lose
(12:12):
that, like she turns into moreof a tradition, it's more of a
traditional like wolfman stylewerewolf rather than an actual
full size wall. So I wanted tokeep them bipedal because they
also maintain their intelligencein my book, their personality,
so you can't have conversations.
And I wanted to do that I'mlike, I wanted to play with the
conventions and be like, no, no,they're my main characters are
(12:33):
going to have full on trendconversations and casual scenes,
while transformed, especially asthe series goes on. And most of
the protagonists are werewolves.
So you know, there'll be havinglunch, because it just happens
to be that day, or whatever,and, you know, little things
(12:55):
like that weird accommodationsthat I had to make for my
wardrobe, being tall, you know,not being able to find certain
outfits, I could relate that toher and finding outfits that she
could keep wearing after shetransformed and not just tear
through them. A lot of it,again, is the perception. It's,
(13:17):
it's dealing with that inyourself as well in saying, you
know, this is the physicality ofthis aspect of myself and
learning to accept aspects ofthat as well. Um, you know, I'm
transgender, that means nomatter what I do in terms of
hormones, or surgery, there arecertain things I cannot
(13:38):
physically change. I can't makemyself shorter, I can't change,
you know, the, the width of myshoulders or anything, that the
things that I'm so selfconscious about, you know. So I
tried to put some of that intomy character of learning to
accept the things that shecouldn't really change, but also
(13:59):
learning how to control thethings that she could influence
through her behavior and throughher decisions. Yeah, it's, I
love the idea of the metaphorsand I think a big part of that
is that, you know, as atransgender 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 beenaround forever all of recorded
(14:22):
history. And before recordedhistory, there have been
transgender people or howeverthe term was for that in
history, but we've not had thelanguage in modern culture in
the modern cultures world hasnot had the language for it. And
as a result, we've only evershown up as villains in pop
(14:45):
culture, anything that comes uplike that is, you know, some
kind of villainous character,duplicitous character, and
that's been the the negativestereotype. So we didn't have
really good metaphors. So we alot of us, I know for myself,
and I've got a number offriends, We clung to the
metaphors that we could findthat seemed like it fit. And
(15:08):
anything that was positive andeven remotely tangentially, you
know, trans friendly and usuallyit was never all that friendly,
it was always still usually thebutt of a joke. But if you
figure out a way to see yourselfin these things that are
metaphorical abouttransformation, because the the
(15:31):
metaphors about transformationare the only times when it was
positive. Otherwise, it wasalmost always exclusively a
negative thing. I didn't see a Imean, the I think the first time
I'd ever seen a positiveportrayal of a trans character
in media was John Lithgow In TheWorld According to Garp when I
was a kid and my brain exploded,and I'm like, I can't tell
(15:54):
anybody in my house what I'mfeeling about this movie right
now. You know, then it was likeI was in art school when I was
introduced to the anime Ranmagrandma one half, and I'm like,
yes. But what, it's the kind ofthing that it always popped up
in like American comics. But italways been that one off issue
(16:14):
of oh, this character getsmagically transformed into a
girl. And let's bait let's pokefun at that for a while. You
know, growing up my generationgenerations before my
generation, and a good chunk ofthem afterwards didn't have any
kind of positive representationof that kind of a character. I
(16:36):
did choose very specifically tomake my protagonist in the
series cisgender. However,because I didn't, I wanted to
make sure that the the core ofit was about it. That's coming,
compounding two issues, I knewthat there is definitely the
story of a transgender werewolfto tell as well. And that is
(16:59):
happening in the series, becausethere's a ton of characters. So
I do introduce a transgenderwolf character, who's you know,
approaching puberty when thebook starts when the series
starts. So I get to, throughher, explore the exact same idea
from a different perspective,but also add some of the
Fanciful elements into it aswell, to create problems that
(17:23):
don't exist, you know, to, toget to give the character a
little bit extra to have to workthrough like, for example, my
werewolves all by basically kindof have healing abilities. How
does medication, how doesmedication work when you have a
healing ability that negates it?
And what does that do to yoursense of self?
Alex Iantaffi (17:42):
Oh, that's fascinating, because now I'm
thinking, How do hormones workfor trans werewolves? What's
gonna happen? How would likesurgical interventions work?
Right? That's the whole like...
Dee Fish (17:54):
Yeah. What, when, when a certain chunk of your body can
grow back? Exactly. Oh, what Ithought I'd think about I'm
like, What a terrible concept.
I'm like, Oh, my God, if Ibecame a werewolf based on the
rules of my narrative, whencertain anatomy pieces grow back
that I have worked quite hard toget rid of.
Alex Iantaffi (18:12):
This sounds like it might go from fantasy to
horror very quickly, at leastfor us trans folks. I was like,
that sounds like it felt
Dee Fish (18:18):
very scary. And I like I do play with I do play with
the genres. Yes. It's a werewolfstory. So there's some degree of
horror to it. But it's, it'smuch less a horror than it is
just a kind of a fantasy. bitmore 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 ofhorror, I am not a huge fan of
(18:41):
saying anything is one genrethat just bores me, I don't want
to just be like, No, it must bethis, because that's the genre
that I've stuck to No, I want totell different kinds of stories.
Alex Iantaffi (18:51):
Absolutely. When telling different talking about
telling different kinds ofstories, and going across
genres. Let's talk about FindingDee, which is your web, you
know, and yeah, let's talk abouthow 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
(19:12):
already starting to talk aboutthat Why create Finding Dee. And
what does that mean to you as atrans artist to come out later
in life?
Dee Fish (19:24):
When I first started when I first came out, I was
working on Dandy & Company. Theother comic that you described
earlier was so it's a wacky fun,you know, Looney Tunes, meets
duck tails meets peanuts, kindof comic strip, talking animals,
all kinds of fun stuff. And Ienjoyed working on it, and I
(19:45):
hadn't ever really thought muchabout it, except for the fact
that I appeared in dandy andcompany as the cartoon it's like
the strip would break the fourthwall and the characters would
complain about the story line.
Like the main character is verymuch cut from that kind of Bugs
Bunny when he would have a smartaleck personality. So he
(20:05):
wouldn't be like, um, so why amI not in the strips this much
all the supporting characters?
What's up with that my name onthe strip. So the character
would come in and give me a hardtime as a running ongoing joke.
So I actually came out in thestrip to the character who
showed up asking why theyweren't in the comic enough that
(20:26):
week, and then looking up at megoing, wait, what? And I'm
explaining the concept. Andthey're like, Okay, so you're a
girl. And your name Dee. I, noneof that explains why I'm not in
the strip enough. And that wasthat was the gag. But that's for
a good chunk of people. That'show I came out and people who
(20:48):
weren't on my social media orweren't close friends. That's
how I came out, I came out acartoon version of myself that I
had been drawing as a tertiarybackground character in my other
comic for years. So I was stilldrawing that I was still working
on the Wellkeeper. And I starteda blog. I'm like, Well, I'm
gonna do a blog, a lot of peopleare, all the kids these days are
(21:09):
the blog. And, you know, I'm 41,I just came out, just discovered
that was actually the nationalaverage when I came out for
people coming out. Yeah, whichwas very, very strange to me.
But it made sense. When we hadmoved recently as starting
fresh, and I was in a situationto do so. And I had a lot of
(21:33):
support from my partner, Heidi,who, like me, we had started
dating years earlier, but sheknew about this from date, date
one, we talked about this on thefirst day of I wasn't sure I you
know, I was still very hesitantto accept the idea, largely
based on physicality factors andacceptance, no one would accept
me. And I'm huge. So I'm nevergoing to quote unquote, pass and
(21:58):
all these things. You know, ittook me a long time to realize I
was just putting roadblocks upin my head. So I created this
blog that I called Finding Deeand it was just about writing
about what was what I wasthinking about what was
happening in my day, theobstacles I was facing the, you
know, the the jerky looks andall that negativity that you
(22:20):
deal with. And that's what itturned out to be it was post
after post of ventingnegativity, and there are some
people they need to do that.
That's how they cope, they theyvent their negativity, they put
down these things that hurt themand give them anxiety, and they
it alleviates them in tellingthat story. I am the exact
(22:42):
opposite kind of person. Thatramps it up for me that
intensifies my anxiety, thatintensifies my anger and an
angry situation. Having ithaving to retell that story. So
it wasn't working. I steppedaway from the blog. Meanwhile, I
(23:02):
had friends, the ones that havestuck by me, who kept saying,
oh, you know, you should do acomic about this. You know, this
is really interesting. You knowthat, you know, you're going
through this change in yourlife, and you're such a
different person now and right,talk to you. It's like that, you
know, I had people that arealways you know, oh, they're I
(23:23):
never I never would have guessedthis in a million years. But on
the same token, it also doesn'tsurprise me at all. You always
seem like you were holdingsomething back and I was having
all these people tell me overand over again. You should make
a comic out of your experiencescoming out as trans you should
do a comic about that. Surecomic about that. Um, and that's
literally the first comic stripI did was me going fine. I'm
(23:46):
gonna do a comic about it. I'mgonna do a bleeping comic about
it. Oh, wait, I can curse inthis one. Because my other
comics had all been all ages. Sothen I'm like, well fighting
these about me and I curse Socartoon DS get a curse. Love it.
And which I didn't think to askhim the beginning about the the
(24:08):
rating for this. So I've beencensoring myself.
Alex Iantaffi (24:13):
Here. Good. We have some episodes where we
curse some episodes where we'vegone to put a little warning if
this cursing it's all good.
Dee Fish (24:19):
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 trydoing a comic about this. And a
comic strip. I love all kinds ofcomics. I love doing comic books
short term, like superhero comicbooks and adventure and fantasy
comic books, you know, dramaticgraphic novels, but I love comic
(24:42):
strips. I've been wanting tomake comic strips since I was a
little little kid up. I createdthe characters that I used for
Dandy and company when I waseight years old in grade school,
and I've been drawing them forover 40 years now. These
characters are a decade old. Arethat my stepson. Um, and so I
mean, I love comic strips, andI'm like, but if I do it as if
(25:07):
I, if I do them as a comicstrip, it's not a commitment to
a series, like, I'm gonna do agraphic novel, and it's gonna
have to be x pages. A strip isjust a one off bag. So I'll just
draw strip. And by dragging as astrip, if I lean on as a humor
comic, I can try and find apunch line, find humor in these
situations that are stressing meout. find humor in the dysphoria
(25:31):
find humor in the app, the time,over an hour, it would take for
me to prepare to leave the housefor something like toilet paper,
I wouldn't just go to thesedays, I will just wake up in the
morning, throw a t shirt on andgo to the store to get groceries
(25:52):
if I need to. I don't give.
Yeah, but it took me a long timeto get there. It was early days,
you know, especially when I youknow, it was pre hormones, pre
hair removal, any of that stuff.
So I was very, very selfconscious. These days, I've been
on hormones. For years, I've hadsub certain surgeries, I've had
(26:14):
hair removal, I'm much morecomfortable in my skin, each one
of those steps makes me morecomfortable in my skin. But back
then I wasn't. So things likethat were the material for a
strip, but find the punch linein it find the joke. And more
often than not, each strip hadsome degree of humor, because my
(26:35):
thinking was, I treated it lesslike an experiment less like a
comic and more like anexperiment in self therapy. If I
can, if I can figure out a wayfor Cartoon me to smile and
laugh through this traumaticscenario, maybe real me can deal
with it better. And over time,it it's working. It's working.
(26:59):
For me, it has worked for me ina lot of respects. And figuring
out that, you know, so long asthey're just a negative
interaction with someone thatdoesn't end in physical
violence, or the police beingcalled, then it's a situation I
can find a way to turn intosomething vaguely humorous.
(27:23):
There's some kernel of humor inany of these situations, even if
it's just the exacerbation andfrustration of the repeating
cycles of that waitress thatwants to come up to the table.
And when me and Heidi are eatingand go, Okay, here's a refill on
your on your soda, sir, and yellit yell just that word at the
(27:47):
top of their lungs. And how thatsituation rectified is when
dinner was ready. It said onceyou get the car warmed up, and
I'm like, It's summer, go getthe car warmed up, you're gonna
don't say anything. This is theonly good pizza place in like
100 miles. Just go get the car.
(28:07):
10 minutes later, she comes outthe problem itself, we will
never have her again as aserver, and we never get
Alex Iantaffi (28:15):
good. I'm so glad you're supportive partner in
those kinds of situations thatcan be so stressful and hurtful.
Dee Fish (28:22):
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 myfamily who have made assumptions
that Heidi is the enabler here.
And at no point in ourrelationship, has she ever
enabled me or pushed me on thisdirection? She just let me
(28:43):
experiment let me take one stepat a time. And discover who I
am. Not just who I was, but whoI wanted to be. Which is yeah,
what led to the title of thestrip being Finding Dee? Yeah,
there was nothing about thestrip that was a calculated
(29:04):
business decision. Otherwise, Iwould have called it something
else. That didn't sound so muchlike Finding Dory and Finding
Nemo. Yes. I would have sat downand done model sheets of me and
Heidi and our dog Po from thebeginning instead of working up
a model sheet, almost a yearinto the strip. So those early
(29:24):
strips, like you can kind of seeI'm making it up as I go. I'm
figuring out the style. I'mfiguring out what we're going to
look like. And now we arestraight up cartoon characters
in the current strips. Themodels are very well defined.
They don't really look much likeus in a literal sense, but
they've kind of looked like whatwe feel like. I mean, it works.
(29:45):
I have been both of us have beenliterally picked out by people
in town because they read thecomic. That's amazing. Then
they've seen us in public and goyour Dee and Heidi. I read the
comic. I'm like, you don't seephotos of us but you recognized
us from my wonky drawing.
Writing. Okay, that's, that'sthe thing that's happening,
Alex Iantaffi (30:03):
while your drawings are pretty amazing, and
I love what you said about kindof making it up as you were, as
you went along, because I feelso much of transition, honestly,
at least for me, was kind ofmaking 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 moreconfident, like you said, you
(30:25):
know, at the beginning, therewas so much heartache, and then
you're like, I'm just gonna goto the store, you know, and not
spend like, a lot of timegetting ready or trying to kind
of cater to other people'sexpectations, which is
wonderful. And I love what yousaid, as well about Finding Dee
being like self therapy, I thinkthat creating can be such a
(30:47):
healing thing. And I wonder ifyou've heard from other trans
women, especially about whatFinding Dee has meant to them.
Or if you've ever kind of hadinteractions with kind of trans
men about what the cartoon meansto them.
Dee Fish (31:05):
I have, it was something that I never would
have expected, I never wouldhave given a second thought to
when I started this. Again, it'sjust this thing that I thought
was going to be this little funexperiment that I never thought
would be the comic. That's thething I've been working on for
six, six plus years nowregularly with a weekly strip.
(31:25):
I've got you know, I think I'vegot 300 of these things in the
can by now. And I never thoughtof it beyond that. So when I
started getting messages realearly on, from other transgender
people, male, female, nonbinary, all expressing I saw
(31:50):
myself in that story in thatsequence in that one joke. A lot
of people it turns out that alot of the experiences that in
my brain were trans specific,were just universal. Fresh, like
(32:10):
I would be frustrated going andsearching for clothes. And here
I am a 41 learning about howthat crazy women's clothes sizes
are. There's no universalstandard from garment to
garment. And I had lived thefirst 40 years of my life, you
know, presenting male somewhatagainst my will. I was damned
(32:32):
easy shopping. You know, thewaist size of those pants were
measured in inches. Yes, that'sit. You know, now you literally
every store has a differentmeasuring guide, and you have to
try everything on and make youfeel bad about it. And these are
things that I discovered at 41That to me were relevant story,
(32:53):
but then I'd have you know,cisgender women say oh my god,
yes, say my hate that that sucksso bad. Or I did one real early
on. It was the first trip I didthat blew up and it was about
me. I have started with medressed as like Tomb Raider
slash Indiana Jones going onthis adventure in this like,
hidden, hidden caverns of doomand mystery, all to find the
(33:16):
Holy Grail of a bra that is bothcute, fits, and is cheap. Oh,
yeah. And that one struck anerve. And that's when I
realized that the experiences Iwas telling were very universal.
But yeah, I've had a lot ofpeople who come up to me at
comic book conventions, or whohave messaged me, who have said
(33:37):
things that are honestlyhumbling to me, they put me into
they put into a very, very realperspective that this comic that
I'm drawing that I originallydidn't think of as anything
other than therapy for myselfhas been therapy for other
people. That it has a meaningthat I have. You know, and I
(33:59):
hate to say it in terms thatmake it sound lofty, but I have
touched people with this andit's not something I was
prepared to do. Emotionally itfreaks me out a little bit
because I was very much like ano, I'm just the haha look funny
drawing. Um, you know, I wasn'tprepared for that. But I have
(34:20):
heard that a lot I've had, I'vehad parents come up to me at
events, we vended at both comicconventions and at pride events.
And we've had parents come up tome and they flip through and
they're like, oh, my gosh, thisis amazing. You know, my kid is
telling me that they're transand I, I would love to show this
(34:42):
to them. The number one questionI always get asked, Is this
appropriate? And I'm like, onthe covers of all the books that
I've done, it always sayscontains naughty words. But
that's it. That's the onlycaveat that I'd say. I'd say
that's well. There's cursing inthere because I curse It's part
of my life. And it's a part ofthe experience. And I've kind of
(35:04):
gotten to take gotten to thepoint of saying, you know, as
harsh of a reality as it is, ifyou have a child who is coming
out as transgender, they'regoing to have to learn how to
navigate the F word, becausethey're going to be hearing it
weaponized against them a lot.
Alex Iantaffi (35:21):
Absolutely. And, you know, as my kids would say,
that probably those kids areprobably heard much worse, in
middle school already, or evenin school nowadays. So I don't
mean, the curious thing isnecessarily off putting to young
people. But I think, you know, Ilove what you said about just
(35:42):
you were creating this just foryourself, but then it did touch
people, which I'm not surprisedbecause of representation is so
important, right? You just hadfor people kind of, I think
we're close in age of ourgeneration that really wasn't
representation. Right? And so toI don't know, for you, but for
me, every time I see, transrepresentation is like, my heart
(36:02):
grows, like five sizes, right?
And then I want to recommend itto people, because I know that
people are looking forresources. You know, even even
if it's just a cartoon in airquotes, it's so much more than a
cartoon for people. I think it'sseen themselves. Yes, seeing
themselves mean so much to somany people.
Dee Fish (36:25):
Yeah, it's once I realized the scope of it, and
it's something Heidi helped mewith in terms of our everyday
life. Like, the first night,after I'd come out to everybody,
like everyone who knew me knewthe first night, we went out to
dinner, she helped me getdressed, she put my makeup on.
(36:47):
But we went out to dinner, andthen we walked around Walmart
for a while. And I, I deal witha lot of social anxiety, I don't
like to say I have socialanxiety, because I feel like
using that terminology givesgives the anxiety more power. I
deal with social anxiety. Thisis a mental trick for me, I try
(37:08):
not to use the terminology ofsaying I, I have depression, I
have social anxiety, I've beendiagnosed with them. I know I,
I'm dealing with them. It's aphrasing that I'm going a little
tangential. But it's a part ofthe overall story. It's, I try
not to say it that way. Becausea I don't want to define that as
a part of my identity. I don'twant to and I don't want it to
(37:30):
be an excuse for my behavior. IfI'm dealing with a lot of them.
I have to have, I it's importantto me that I didn't want to have
to change my life that much tothe degree that I want to still
do the things that Heidi and Ihave always done. We go to
karaoke religiously. It's ourit's our crack. You know, we
(37:55):
love to go out to eat. There areyou know, neither of us are
skinny for a reason. You know,we like to go out, we're having
a nice date day, this Sundaycoming up, and we're looking
forward to it, I am veryvisible. And I realized that
that really what that visibilityis important. Because all anyone
ever sees of Heidi and I arejust a couple going out and
(38:19):
doing normal things. We go tothe grocery store, we go to
karaoke, we go to therestaurants, we're on the Art
Council, where you know, we goto the, we do all these
different things in our town.
And another thing that becamekind of humbling was that I was
the only transgender out personthat I knew in our little city
(38:39):
here in very rural WesternPennsylvania. And I lost track
of how many that we haveencountered 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 withthat. But I don't, I'm not a big
fan of self delusion in thatregard. And especially when it's
hurtful to yourself on purpose,and that is I am partly
(39:03):
responsible for that I am very,very visible. And just like my
general life and my strip is allabout just presenting. This is
me. I'm just a person. I'm adork. I love I love cartoons and
comics and you know, the plateyou'll find me more and more
(39:27):
often than anywhere else on thetoy aisle at at our local
Walmart or in the graphic novelsection 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'tchanged when I came out and just
expanded the number of toys Ifelt comfortable buying. So
yeah, record. There's that sideof me that has to remind myself
(39:54):
that the representation aspectof the strip and is just As
important as the the way we liveour everyday lives. I don't
consider myself overtly activistit in the sense that I'm not
walking around kicking in doors.
(40:15):
I'm just walking through them,I'm just trying to exist the
same way I did before. And havethat be a thing that people
understand is just the way itis. That's just the reality. I
am this person, I am the I'mgonna come in and eat and, you
know, I still get crappy looks,we still get, you know, dirty
(40:38):
stares from people and, youknow, angry glares. But I
noticed them less and less. or,more accurately, I dwell on them
less than less, I still havethat mentality of situational
awareness. You know, I can go tothe bathroom by myself these
days, but I don't ever gowithout my purse and my phone.
So if I have to have my ID onme, and if I have to call for
(40:59):
help, I can. Yeah. But I'm stillaware of that. But I don't. I
don't walk in like I'mcommitting a crime anymore. You
know, because I was so terrifiedfor the longest time of what
other people's expectationswere. And that's gotten
terrible. I mean, I came out inJanuary of 2016. Of all the
(41:23):
years to come out. I came out inthe year that this exploded.
Yeah, the year that the bathroomhysteria started. Yeah, the year
that it became a politicaltalking point to the nth degree
I came out then. And it's justone of those things. I'm like,
Are you kidding me? Really? Iwaited 41 years, and it just
(41:46):
happened to coincide with Trump.
Yeah. And everything that's comeout of the political machines,
trying to demonize transgenderpeople and turn us into, you
know, the world's new Boogeyman.
Yeah. And it's, it's insanelyfrustrating. You know, I know
(42:12):
that realistically speaking, youknow, there's a part of me that
wishes I could go back in timeand tell myself to come out
later. But I also know the worldwasn't there yet. You know,
would have been that much harderto do anything, I wouldn't be in
the position I'm in now. I'm ina comfortable position. You
know, my, my, I have a day job.
My boss met me after coming out.
(42:34):
So there's no issues with that.
whatsoever. She's beenremarkably supportive of
everything in that regard. It'sa that's not a factor of
anything I worry about. And Iknow if I find new job, I'm
gonna throw myself right backout there. You know, I know that
when I came out, I actually, Iactually got my rates cut by my
(42:55):
then main client, ironically, tothe national. Ironically, I got
my rates cut to the nationalaverage of women versus men's
salaries. It was kind ofamazing. Right away, I suddenly
was worth less to somebody thatI've been working with for
decades. Yeah. It's so weirdhow, you know, you don't think
(43:15):
about the pink tax until youhave to pay it. But it got its
real.
Alex Iantaffi (43:20):
Oh, absolutely.
So Real. And let's talk, youknow, we're gonna talk about
that visibility a little bitmore, because Trans Day of
visibility is coming up. And youliterally came out under in a
very visible way as a comicartist that's right later in
life in this very visible way.
In the cartoon that you weredrawing at the time, and what
(43:43):
was it like to kind of do it insuch a public way? And some way
and what does this thatvisibility mean to you now?
Dee Fish (43:53):
I'm doing it very public in my comics, and then
changing the focus of at leastthe main comic I was working on
to be about that was somethingthat was kind of a double edged
sword. On one hand, it was veryempowering. Made me feel like
you know, okay, I'm telling astory that's worth telling. I'm
telling a story that only I cantell from this point of view.
(44:17):
And people seem to enjoy it. SoI started putting more and more
emphasis on finding d as itstarted to kind of blowing up on
social media and people startedpaying much more attention and
I'm like, okay, wasn't what Iwas planning on being the
artistic focus, but I'm going toput my artistic focus on this
project for now. And it beingI'd already been like, before
(44:42):
moving up to Pennsylvania, welived in Florida for years and I
was a regular mainstay of thecomic book convention circuit in
Florida. I went to all the majorshows. I was an invited guest to
a good chunk of the biggestshows where I wasn't paying for
my table anymore. I'd become atleast moderately successful
enough to get my foot in thedoor in that regard. And so, you
(45:06):
know, I very early on got toencounter a good degree of
jealousy from people and a lotof backstabbing, I'd find out
from other from friends thatfrom shows I wasn't going to
that I was a topic ofconversation, where people were
accusing me of this my entirelifestyle being a publicity
stunt just to sell these comics.
That's rough. And, um, and it'sone of those things where it's
(45:29):
like, yeah, that's why I havesubmitted myself to taking going
to fit to a mandatory therapy sothat I could get hormones and
surgery legally go through thehoops it takes to change my
name. I'm getting laser hairremoval, getting chunks of my
anatomy removed. I'm goingthrough the idea that every time
(45:54):
I leave the house, I have toworry whether or not somebody is
going to accuse me of a crime ortry to get me to say nothing of
just getting stairs gettingscreamed at when I come out of
the bathroom in public. Yeah, Idid all of those. Because I knew
one day I was going to be on thegender stories podcast. You
(46:15):
know, it's like, really are you?
It's as ridiculous as the peoplethat claim that transgender
people are doing this simply toto get into restrooms and
assault women. Oh, my God, likethe doors like the doors are
guarded now. Why on earth wouldanyone go through the trouble to
(46:37):
make themselves this much morevisible when you if somebody
wants first off anything? Anyonethat they would say and oh,
they're gonna do this and theyget to restrooms and assault
women. The Assault is alreadyillegal.
Alex Iantaffi (46:49):
And assaults are already happening. There's
plenty of cis men already canfreely walk into women's
bathroom and assault people. Soit's so so bad happens
Dee Fish (47:00):
all the time. Yeah, what they're what they what
they've turned into a politicaltalking point never happens.
Exactly. I think I think thatthere's a grand total of like,
two instances in the last 20years that has been that has
been recorded. Statisticallyspeaking, that's non existent.
Absolutely. Yeah. You know, but,you know, the idea is enough
(47:22):
that legislation needs to bepassed 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, forme, my visibility, my being
being out there, putting mycomic book out there promoting
my comic book, just like it'sany other comic book, promoting
it and putting it out thereselling it at shows, you know,
(47:46):
doing whatever interviews I canget to help promote it the same
way I would for any other comicand 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'sit. I changed the road I was on,
you know, I pick the road thatis both bumpier and smoother at
(48:06):
the same time. It's bumpy or totraverse, but the car rides so
much better. I love that. That'sa great description.
Thank you. It's like I got myshots fixed. Yeah. Yeah, it's
that visibility to me is reallyimportant because it benefits
(48:29):
not just me, but everyone elsewho'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, Ican't sit here and pretend that
I don't have a certain degree ofan impact with what I do. The
numbers may not be massive, Imay not be you know, the biggest
(48:51):
hit out there by any stretch ofthe imagination, in terms of
being a fiscal success withthis, but the comic is finding
people and people arediscovering the comic, and they
are, it is helping peopleunderstand who they are and who
they want to be. I have hadpeople tell me that they have
found the strength to come outbecause of a comic strip I drew,
(49:14):
I took maybe an hour and a halfon helped change the course of
someone's life. And that is thatis weighty. And that is the kind
of thing that makes me want tocurl up in a blanket and be
like, I don't want to face theworld because this is a little
bit too big. You know, but I'vealso dealt with, you know, I've
(49:35):
had people who used to getcommissions from me at comic
conventions, you know, tell methat they've torn up every piece
of art that they spent money onbuying from me because I
discussed them. I've had peoplethat smile to my face at comic
book conventions, talk shitabout me behind my back and try
to make me look bad and Youknow, there's both sides of that
(50:00):
story visibility is visibilityis a double edged sword. Because
the more visible you are, themore you have to absorb. So the
more hits that the more hitsthat will come your way the The
brighter the light on you, youknow, the more moths are going
to come after you, the moremosquitoes are going to land on.
(50:22):
Yeah.
Alex Iantaffi (50:25):
And it's it's such a Yeah, absolutely such a
terrible double edged swordbecause like you said that
visibility can also reallyilluminate the path for some
people, right? And really,that's what some, you know,
transforms need to like come outor to discover themselves. And
at the same time, the morevisible we are, the more makes
(50:47):
us a target, as well for forpeople who have the exact
opposite agenda. Absolutely.
What is some I know we're kindof coming close to the end of
our time. But I'm curious aboutwhat would you say to trans
folks, and especially transwomen who might be reluctant to
come out later in life, I knowthat I've often heard people,
you know, and I came out in my30s, as well. But I've worked
(51:09):
with people and I've seen peoplein 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 (51:27):
I would say, you know, obviously, you need to come out,
as soon as it's something you'reready 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 comeout sooner, I wish I would have
accepted this part of myselfsooner, and stop throwing
obstacles in my way to say, thisis why I can't do this, this is
(51:52):
why I can't do that. It's, it'ssuch a weird statement, the best
I can usually do is just try totell my own story. That way, I'm
not telling somebody what to do.
Because I feel reallyuncomfortable with that idea.
Especially because I've hadpeople especially younger people
(52:14):
come to me and ask me thesequestions. And I will never
straight up, you know, I'm nevergonna say this is what you
should do. Because then all of asudden, that label of, you know,
our groomers get to patched andterrible
Alex Iantaffi (52:27):
lady. Yeah, absolutely.
Dee Fish (52:30):
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 Iknew, you know, it's, it's
inherent, we have an idea ofwhat we are and what we are
supposed to be, our gender issomething that we are aware of,
(52:53):
on a level that can't bedescribed in the same way that a
cisgender man or woman has neverhad to debate that they are a
man or a woman and, you know, ifthey're, if they're, if their
reproductive organs had beenremoved, or they've been in an
accident, and they losteverything between their legs,
(53:15):
they would still know what theywere, it doesn't have to do with
it doesn't have to do with thepackage, it has to do with who
you are, we have this inherentsense of knowledge of it. And I
knew right away from a very,very young age, for maybe, that
(53:35):
what I was being told I was wasnot what I knew I was I knew
right away, and I triedexpressing it from a very young
age. And it was not accepted.
You know, I was I was made funof at home I was laughed at, I
learned how to put that into alittle container and keep it
locked away and not talk aboutit and not, you know, bring it
up, lock that stuff inside. Andthen you know, you grow up, you
(53:58):
grow up and you kept that in abox for a really long time to
the degree that you're notthinking about it anymore, but
for every now and again, thatlittle pop culture leak over
that movie character that makesyou feel a little uncomfortable
in a familiar way and you'relike No, no, I can't do that.
You know, and then puberty hitsand here I am I sprout up to six
(54:20):
to six three. You know, I'm highto high to hundreds in my
weight. I'm physically built onwide, wide built chest and you
know you look at yourself in themirror and you just feel like
you know betrayed by your ownbody as you go through this
(54:42):
puberty you know that's why I'mso I get the one thing I do get
a little activity about is thatwe're there. You've got all
these motions to try to suppresshormone blockers. I'm like
that's like a that's a deathsentence for a lot of people
because what hormones Whathormones do to our body is
irreversible? Exactly. You know,I, I put a certain degree of
(55:06):
effort, not a lot of effort intovoice training. Because there is
no amount of hormones that aregoing to change what
testosterone did to my voice.
You know, I liked the term, Iliked the term of the idea that
I, you know, I'm dealing withthe effects of testosterone
poisoning, and what it did to mybody, it is irreversible. You
(55:29):
know, there are certain thingsyou can do surgically, but you
can't change what that happened.
Once it's happened, it'shappened. And a huge chunk of
us, a very large percentage ofus knew really early on. Oh,
yeah. And we may have had peopletrying to tell us, we were
wrong, we may have tried tellingourselves we were wrong, because
(55:50):
it would be so hard and youdon't want to lose everything
you've got, oh, I've got a job.
I've got friends, I've gotfamily, and I'm going to lose
them. If I come out. I wasterrified. 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
(56:12):
have somebody say, Oh, well, youknow, there are really tall
women in the WNBA. Or, orthey'll say something like, you
know, what about the Amazons?
And I'm like, they're fictional.
Thank you,
Alex Iantaffi (56:22):
I usually say model height. You know, when
you're over six feet, yourmother height.
Dee Fish (56:27):
You know, I'm like, I can point to like, what
Gwendoline Christie is tallerthan me. Yay. I love Gwendoline
Christie, don't get me wrong.
But by and large, there's onlyone person in this entire region
that I live in. That is the sameheight as I am that cisgender
woman. That's it, I still towerover a lot of people, I tell her
over a lot of men in this area.
(56:52):
And so that made me selfconscious. And that was a
roadblock. And that's how Iwould that's how I tried to word
it is that at the end of theday, passing is not the idea of
passing, it just can be a verymuch a toxic mind work because
it gets into your brain, thatidea isn't important. It's being
(57:15):
true to yourself, being who youknow you are, is worth the
external sources of stress thatwill come to you. Because at the
end of the day, having the senseof confidence of I made this
choice to embrace who I knew Ialways was removed a lot of the
(57:39):
interior stress and at the endof the day, there is nothing
that's going to tear you downmore than the bad things you
tell yourself far more thansomething somebody else is going
to tell you. We do a lot ofdamage to ourselves. And by
coming out, I took a lot ofpower from those voices. Yeah,
I've got voices out in the worldwho are willing to tell you all
(58:01):
kinds of messed up things, but Ican't control that. I can show
them they're wrong. By living mylife my way by living my life
and my truth and being out thereand being being seen being
visible and being noticed and,and telling my specific story.
You know, through my comic, Ican prove them wrong. But I
(58:23):
can't change their mind rightthere in the moment. And it
doesn't matter. You know, at theend of the day, I can't. I live
40 years of my life, trying tomake other people comfortable.
And, you know, seven years ago,I turned 41, which gives you an
idea of my age. And you know, Ihave never once regretted that
(58:49):
decision. I have regrettedthings that have happened. I
have regretted other people'sreactions, I have regretted
learning things about otherpeople that, you know, I've
grown I've grown distant from alot of a lot of people who just
were never able to getcomfortable with this. Yeah. And
that's not my responsibility.
Absolutely. I didn't removemyself from their lives. You
(59:10):
know, I just, you know, you canonly be true to yourself. And if
this is your truth, it's thething that embracing it can make
you feel comfortable in a waythat keeping it locked in a
bottle can't Yeah, I can onlytell people, I chose to embrace
(59:31):
what I knew to be true in spiteof the physical obstacles of my
height, my size, the depth of myvoice, you know, it's that, you
know, a lot of things that canbe, you know, adjusted over time
with hormones and training andthings like that to where it
becomes more second nature.
(59:52):
That's fine. That's all wellgood and fine. But none of those
physical obstacles that Ithought were the most Important
thing in the world turned out tobe very important at all, once I
made the decision to be who Iwas who I knew I already was.
Absolutely, that would be what Iwould tell somebody, I would
tell them what it did for me.
Alex Iantaffi (01:00:12):
That's so beautiful. Thank you for sharing
that with the gender stories,listeners. And my last question
is usually, is there anything wehave not talked about that you
wanted to share?
Dee Fish (01:00:26):
I'm not really I mean, we talked about the werewolf
books. I'm always excited totalk about those there. That's
my big new toy. I can't wait forthe first one to actually be out
in print, because I've gotten alot of really great feedback
from folks on it, who reallyloved it. And I'm super excited
about that. I'm still working onfinding d weekly that runs every
(01:00:48):
Wednesday at finding dcomic.com. D finding d
comic.com. runs every Wednesdaynew comics can find all find out
all about everything going onall the weird little details I
have told. I have told the storyof my archy ectomy in the comic
strip, I have told the story ofmy breast enhancement, which was
(01:01:09):
just last year. But also I'vetold the stories of Oh, we got
cats. And that's a huge cluster.
They're adorable, but they makeme bleed. So it's, it's about
that it's about life. And youknow, I would love more people
to read it and spread the word.
Right now. Through the comiccompany unlikely heroes studios,
(01:01:29):
we are running a Kickstarterthis week that ends on the 14th
or the 13th. of February, for acolor collection. We are
currently at stretch goals now.
So we made our initial goal, ortrying to get stretch goals
covered. And that's a collectionof about 80 to 80 pages of comic
strips and full color for thefirst time. In print that way
(01:01:51):
for the first time, which I'mreally excited about and that is
at you HSUUH studios.com forwardslash, kick it and then the
number two, so you hstudios.com. Forward slash kick
it to wonder and that's theKickstarter. That's the
(01:02:15):
Kickstarter for the colorcollection of all the first
strips.
Alex Iantaffi (01:02:19):
And I'll make sure that I put all of this
links in the Episode Notes sothat your listener can find all
those links. And if peoplewanted to follow you on social
media, or find your website, doyou have any handles that they
should look out for on Instagramor Twitter.
Dee Fish (01:02:37):
Most of them are just D fish or D Brisby. Fish like
Facebook and Twitter and allthat stuff. I don't make it hard
to find me I try to make it aseasy as possible. Also, all my
social media is linked throughthe main website, which is the
Tumblr page for which is findingv comic.com. Or just finding
(01:02:59):
d.com I got both URLs they'lltake you to the website and all
the way at the bottom is all thelinks to my social media if you
want to follow me I post allkinds of I got a Patreon where I
do rough sketches and I show thethe preview art for the next
week strip and you get to seestrips a week in advance and you
(01:03:19):
can read up to I think currentlyI think 21 chapters of my first
werewolf book are up there thefirst for free.
Alex Iantaffi (01:03:28):
That's exciting.
Dee Fish (01:03:30):
That's that's, that's patreon.com forward slash big
pond comics, which you can alsofind that I got so many
websites. The novel's website islycanthropy. A and the single
girl.com It's long but the booktitles long
Alex Iantaffi (01:03:47):
works is very clear, very easy to find. Well,
the it has been such a pleasureto have you on gender stories.
Thank you so much for making thetime to be interviewed today.
And dear listeners. Until nextepisode, keep being true to
yourself and thank you forlistening. Thank you
There's a whole lot of things I want to tell you
about. Adventures dangerous andqueer. Some you can guess and
some I've only hinted at, soplease lend me an ear.
Narrator (00:26):
everyone has a relationship with gender. What's
your story? Hello and welcome toGender stories with your host,
Dr Alex Iantaffi.
Alex Iantaffi (00:35):
Hello and welcome to another episode gender
stories. I know I'm always superexcited but I truly am excited
to have another wonderful guestand I am here interviewing Dee
Fish who is a Pennsylvania basedcartoonist, illustrator and
graphic designer. As acartoonist, she is the creator
of the online comic strip,“Dandy & Company“. An all-ages
(00:58):
humor comic strip in the vein of“Looney Tunes” and “Peanuts”
surrounding the misadventures ofa dog and his boy that ran from
2001 to 2018. She is also thewriter and artist of the creator
owned comic book, “TheWellkeeper", A young adult
fantasy/adventure. As anartist, she has worked on
stories for “Tellos”, “ThePerhapanauts” and “The Mice
(01:23):
Templar” for Image comics, “StarMage” and “White Chapel” for IDW
Publishing, “Atomic Robo” forRed 5 Comics, and is the co
creator, co writer andillustrator for the series
“Carpe Noctem” for HashtagComics. Recently, Dee
became the artist of SabrinaPandora’s long-running webcomic,
(01:45):
“Giant Girl Adventures”, and in2017, began her current
webcomic, "Finding Dee. "FindingDee" is the hilarious and
heartwarming webcomic about thetrials and tribulations of
trying to make it as acartoonist while coming out as
transgender in your 40s. WelcomeDee, it's so good to have you on
the show.
Dee Fish (02:05):
Thank you, it's great to be here.
Alex Iantaffi (02:07):
So you are so creative and do so many things,
as it's very clear from yourbio. Any favorite projects that
you want to share with thelisteners for gender stories or
Yeah, anything that you want totalk about in terms of your
creative work to begin with?
Dee Fish (02:26):
It's everything really, I, you know, I'm really
proud of most of the stuff thatI've worked on. I think that the
Finding Dee strips are probablythe best that they've been, I've
been really trying to get alittle better artistically every
year. I work we do a new page ofGiant Girl adventures that run
(02:47):
every Friday. So yeah, findingDee runs every Wednesday, giant
girl runs every Friday. And ontop of that, I have a day job
and occasional freelance work.
So I am very, very busy. I'malso working on a series of
Werewolf novels because I don'thave enough to do in my life.
And I got really bored in COVID.
(03:07):
So I took on a lot of littleprojects, but I've got a ton of
things going at any givenmoment. And, you know, it's for
me, it's often a thing of allI'm ever talking about, like on
social media is what project I'mworking on. It's like, that's my
life. I
Alex Iantaffi (03:26):
that makes sense.
I saw that you're writingwerewolves novels, and I was so
intrigued. How did that idea.
I'm kind of really curious aboutthat.
Dee Fish (03:36):
Okay. The first novel is called lycanthropy. And the
single girl, it's running on myPatreon right now a chapter at a
time. I'm actually currentlywriting the sixth book in the
series. And the whole ideaactually started in my head
about six years ago or so once Iwhen I after coming out as trans
(04:00):
and also noticing how much ofthe stories that I kind of
congregated around or that's notthe right word isn't, whatever.
It's a lot of the stories thatwere it's a perfectly Cromulent
word. A lot of the stories thatI found myself the most
interested in were stories abouttransformation about you know,
(04:23):
people and characters thatundergo, you know, mental and
physical transformations. And soI've always loved like
werewolves and stuff like that.
And, but I've also never liked alot of the tropes about them.
And so I've been questioningthose tropes for years, like,
you know, you don't ever turn onthe news and hear about a wild
(04:43):
wolf that just went on a murderspree. No, they're just animals
that hunt. And so I'm like,Well, why are werewolves
constantly going on murdersprees? It's that didn't make
sense to me. So I was like, Ihad all these ideas in my head
and so about six years ago So Ihad, I was starting laser hair
removal, and very self consciousabout about that. And in my
(05:07):
brain that combined with thesequestions I've always asked
about the genre kind of formed asingle 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 homewith her, and she's super
(05:29):
nervous, and she gets so nervousthat she transforms mid date and
the guy goes running, screaming.
Um, with the whole caveat beingis that the person was never
actually in any danger. It'slike now it's just a thing that
happens. And that's it. I hadone scene in my head, and it sat
(05:50):
there for years and years. And Iwas like, maybe I'll make it as
a comic. Maybe I'll make it asyou know, a comic strip, and
I'll change this, but I had theseed of an idea. And that's it.
That was all I had in my head.
And years later, later, I wastaking a shower, and it occurred
(06:11):
to me what the plot wouldrevolve around would be the core
idea of the plot revolved when Icame up when I thought of the
idea, okay, how did she become awerewolf? Ah, her ex boyfriend
did that to her. And now he'scoming back into her life. Nice.
That's a plot. That's somethingthat I did. And as soon as I did
(06:31):
that, it was on October of 2020,we were in the middle of you
know, everything was lockeddown. I was at home I was
already working on giant girlwith Sabrina, which is those
pages are really complicated anddense art pages, they take me a
long time to do. I was doingfinding dee, there was no way I
(06:52):
could take on another comic artproject. But I had been wanting
to dip my toes into just pureprose writing for a long time. I
had kind of played around doinga whole thing Star Trek
fanfiction with my friend,Sabrina, where we do it kind of
like role playing style. Butwithout the dice, we write
little Star Trek stories. And Igot really, really, I enjoyed
(07:14):
it. So I was like, Oh, well, Ireally just like just writing.
And I had the idea, I startedforming the characters, you
know, and it's something of aspoiler. But I'm also because
I'm a huge Star Trek fan. I'malso a big fan of stories that
have very heavy metaphor tothem. So it's one of those
things where a lot of myexperiences as a transgender
(07:36):
woman found them found their wayinto my cisgendered female
werewolf character, in terms ofdealing with body image
dysmorphia staff. Deal, and butmore than anything dealing with
the perception of the worldversus the reality. The idea
that I took for the whole booksmetaphor in the beginning was
(07:59):
that, you know, you have thisidea of, you know, your main
character is a werewolf, well,what does that mean? Well, that
means what pop culture thinksthat 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 ifthe reality of being a werewolf
for her is absolutely nothinglike what she would have
expected from pop culture. Youknow, she doesn't turn into a
(08:23):
ravening beast, she doesn't gooff on these, you know, mindless
killing, killing things, she,she tends to stay home and order
a big bucket of fried chickenand just, you know, be really
sad because she doesn't know howto tell her best friends. And so
it's stuff like that, where, youknow, she spends more time
worrying about what people aregoing to think then, you know,
(08:45):
worrying that she is going tobecome that thing that everyone
thinks that's what that is. It'sa lot of metaphor. And once I
did that first book, I kind ofwent nuts. And I just kept
writing and writing and writing.
And the first book, I'm runningon Patreon, just kind of like an
(09:07):
extra version of beta testing toa certain degree, see what
people think. I'm planning onlaunching it as an actual
printed book and downloadablethis summer. And you know, every
few months after that a new bookas soon as they're finished with
the editing process, I'll beable to drop because I've
already got five of them in thecan and yeah, like anything at
all became way more complicated,the more I went more mythology
(09:29):
and weirdness, and it started asbasically an idea for a rom com
and it turned into this big, bigepic thing. I don't know what to
do with but but just keepwriting it.
Alex Iantaffi (09:41):
That sounds amazing. And, and you're such a
prolific writer. I mean, yousaid you're on the sixth book,
and you start in fall of 2020.
That's a lot of books to writein a short amount of time. I'm
impressed.
Dee Fish (09:53):
And they're there.
They're bulky to most, most ofthem, two, three, four and five
are all about 50 chapters giveor take nice? Well, I just yeah,
a stream of consciousness writervery much. So
Alex Iantaffi (10:07):
I love that I'm very similar in my writing. So I
can relate before I know it thisway more pages than I ever
intended to write. And it's aneasy thing to do, at least for
me, I'm and I love what you saidabout, you know, werewolves and
transformations and being transand big fantasy fan as well. And
I think a lot of trans peoplecan relate to being really drawn
(10:30):
to this idea, a oftransformation, but B also all
of this kind of conflict betweenhow you feel internally and how
you present externally and howpeople read you and societal
conventions, right? And therecan be so much of that in
fantasy. And so, yes, I wonderwhich, you know, you've already
mentioned some of the tropes,like challenging this trope that
(10:53):
werewolves are gonna go intokilling spree. But which other
tropes are you kind of turningupside down in this series
Dee Fish (11:02):
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 personalexperiences. But you know, she
has the body hair issue, thatliterally every time she
(11:22):
transforms that it's not justthe full moon, it's anytime she
gets overly emotional. Ithappens. And one of the ideas
that I always drove me nuts inwerewolf movies is where you
have characters that had likeblonde highlights and streaks
and nice bangs, and then theyturn into a giant wolf. And then
their hair cut comes back.
Alex Iantaffi (11:46):
Yes, I've always been by that too,
Dee Fish (11:48):
or the hair goes sucked back into their body with
the power of reversing film. Soknow if she transforms by, you
know, in the next morning, whenshe turns back to normal, she's
got to deal with a couple ofpounds worth of, of shed body
hair, it just all comes off. Andshe's like, she'll wake up in
bed, like, the hair in her mouthand everything. She doesn't lose
(12:12):
that, like she turns into moreof a tradition, it's more of a
traditional like wolfman stylewerewolf rather than an actual
full size wall. So I wanted tokeep them bipedal because they
also maintain their intelligencein my book, their personality,
so you can't have conversations.
And I wanted to do that I'mlike, I wanted to play with the
conventions and be like, no, no,they're my main characters are
(12:33):
going to have full on trendconversations and casual scenes,
while transformed, especially asthe series goes on. And most of
the protagonists are werewolves.
So you know, there'll be havinglunch, because it just happens
to be that day, or whatever,and, you know, little things
(12:55):
like that weird accommodationsthat I had to make for my
wardrobe, being tall, you know,not being able to find certain
outfits, I could relate that toher and finding outfits that she
could keep wearing after shetransformed and not just tear
through them. A lot of it,again, is the perception. It's,
(13:17):
it's dealing with that inyourself as well in saying, you
know, this is the physicality ofthis aspect of myself and
learning to accept aspects ofthat as well. Um, you know, I'm
transgender, that means nomatter what I do in terms of
hormones, or surgery, there arecertain things I cannot
(13:38):
physically change. I can't makemyself shorter, I can't change,
you know, the, the width of myshoulders or anything, that the
things that I'm so selfconscious about, you know. So I
tried to put some of that intomy character of learning to
accept the things that shecouldn't really change, but also
(13:59):
learning how to control thethings that she could influence
through her behavior and throughher decisions. Yeah, it's, I
love the idea of the metaphorsand I think a big part of that
is that, you know, as atransgender 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 beenaround forever all of recorded
(14:22):
history. And before recordedhistory, there have been
transgender people or howeverthe term was for that in
history, but we've not had thelanguage in modern culture in
the modern cultures world hasnot had the language for it. And
as a result, we've only evershown up as villains in pop
(14:45):
culture, anything that comes uplike that is, you know, some
kind of villainous character,duplicitous character, and
that's been the the negativestereotype. So we didn't have
really good metaphors. So we alot of us, I know for myself,
and I've got a number offriends, We clung to the
metaphors that we could findthat seemed like it fit. And
(15:08):
anything that was positive andeven remotely tangentially, you
know, trans friendly and usuallyit was never all that friendly,
it was always still usually thebutt of a joke. But if you
figure out a way to see yourselfin these things that are
metaphorical abouttransformation, because the the
(15:31):
metaphors about transformationare the only times when it was
positive. Otherwise, it wasalmost always exclusively a
negative thing. I didn't see a Imean, the I think the first time
I'd ever seen a positiveportrayal of a trans character
in media was John Lithgow In TheWorld According to Garp when I
was a kid and my brain exploded,and I'm like, I can't tell
(15:54):
anybody in my house what I'mfeeling about this movie right
now. You know, then it was likeI was in art school when I was
introduced to the anime Ranmagrandma one half, and I'm like,
yes. But what, it's the kind ofthing that it always popped up
in like American comics. But italways been that one off issue
(16:14):
of oh, this character getsmagically transformed into a
girl. And let's bait let's pokefun at that for a while. You
know, growing up my generationgenerations before my
generation, and a good chunk ofthem afterwards didn't have any
kind of positive representationof that kind of a character. I
(16:36):
did choose very specifically tomake my protagonist in the
series cisgender. However,because I didn't, I wanted to
make sure that the the core ofit was about it. That's coming,
compounding two issues, I knewthat there is definitely the
story of a transgender werewolfto tell as well. And that is
(16:59):
happening in the series, becausethere's a ton of characters. So
I do introduce a transgenderwolf character, who's you know,
approaching puberty when thebook starts when the series
starts. So I get to, throughher, explore the exact same idea
from a different perspective,but also add some of the
Fanciful elements into it aswell, to create problems that
(17:23):
don't exist, you know, to, toget to give the character a
little bit extra to have to workthrough like, for example, my
werewolves all by basically kindof have healing abilities. How
does medication, how doesmedication work when you have a
healing ability that negates it?
And what does that do to yoursense of self?
Alex Iantaffi (17:42):
Oh, that's fascinating, because now I'm
thinking, How do hormones workfor trans werewolves? What's
gonna happen? How would likesurgical interventions work?
Right? That's the whole like...
Dee Fish (17:54):
Yeah. What, when, when a certain chunk of your body can
grow back? Exactly. Oh, what Ithought I'd think about I'm
like, What a terrible concept.
I'm like, Oh, my God, if Ibecame a werewolf based on the
rules of my narrative, whencertain anatomy pieces grow back
that I have worked quite hard toget rid of.
Alex Iantaffi (18:12):
This sounds like it might go from fantasy to
horror very quickly, at leastfor us trans folks. I was like,
that sounds like it felt
Dee Fish (18:18):
very scary. And I like I do play with I do play with
the genres. Yes. It's a werewolfstory. So there's some degree of
horror to it. But it's, it'smuch less a horror than it is
just a kind of a fantasy. bitmore 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 ofhorror, I am not a huge fan of
(18:41):
saying anything is one genrethat just bores me, I don't want
to just be like, No, it must bethis, because that's the genre
that I've stuck to No, I want totell different kinds of stories.
Alex Iantaffi (18:51):
Absolutely. When telling different talking about
telling different kinds ofstories, and going across
genres. Let's talk about FindingDee, which is your web, you
know, and yeah, let's talk abouthow 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
(19:12):
already starting to talk aboutthat Why create Finding Dee. And
what does that mean to you as atrans artist to come out later
in life?
Dee Fish (19:24):
When I first started when I first came out, I was
working on Dandy & Company. Theother comic that you described
earlier was so it's a wacky fun,you know, Looney Tunes, meets
duck tails meets peanuts, kindof comic strip, talking animals,
all kinds of fun stuff. And Ienjoyed working on it, and I
(19:45):
hadn't ever really thought muchabout it, except for the fact
that I appeared in dandy andcompany as the cartoon it's like
the strip would break the fourthwall and the characters would
complain about the story line.
Like the main character is verymuch cut from that kind of Bugs
Bunny when he would have a smartaleck personality. So he
(20:05):
wouldn't be like, um, so why amI not in the strips this much
all the supporting characters?
What's up with that my name onthe strip. So the character
would come in and give me a hardtime as a running ongoing joke.
So I actually came out in thestrip to the character who
showed up asking why theyweren't in the comic enough that
(20:26):
week, and then looking up at megoing, wait, what? And I'm
explaining the concept. Andthey're like, Okay, so you're a
girl. And your name Dee. I, noneof that explains why I'm not in
the strip enough. And that wasthat was the gag. But that's for
a good chunk of people. That'show I came out and people who
(20:48):
weren't on my social media orweren't close friends. That's
how I came out, I came out acartoon version of myself that I
had been drawing as a tertiarybackground character in my other
comic for years. So I was stilldrawing that I was still working
on the Wellkeeper. And I starteda blog. I'm like, Well, I'm
gonna do a blog, a lot of peopleare, all the kids these days are
(21:09):
the blog. And, you know, I'm 41,I just came out, just discovered
that was actually the nationalaverage when I came out for
people coming out. Yeah, whichwas very, very strange to me.
But it made sense. When we hadmoved recently as starting
fresh, and I was in a situationto do so. And I had a lot of
(21:33):
support from my partner, Heidi,who, like me, we had started
dating years earlier, but sheknew about this from date, date
one, we talked about this on thefirst day of I wasn't sure I you
know, I was still very hesitantto accept the idea, largely
based on physicality factors andacceptance, no one would accept
me. And I'm huge. So I'm nevergoing to quote unquote, pass and
(21:58):
all these things. You know, ittook me a long time to realize I
was just putting roadblocks upin my head. So I created this
blog that I called Finding Deeand it was just about writing
about what was what I wasthinking about what was
happening in my day, theobstacles I was facing the, you
know, the the jerky looks andall that negativity that you
(22:20):
deal with. And that's what itturned out to be it was post
after post of ventingnegativity, and there are some
people they need to do that.
That's how they cope, they theyvent their negativity, they put
down these things that hurt themand give them anxiety, and they
it alleviates them in tellingthat story. I am the exact
(22:42):
opposite kind of person. Thatramps it up for me that
intensifies my anxiety, thatintensifies my anger and an
angry situation. Having ithaving to retell that story. So
it wasn't working. I steppedaway from the blog. Meanwhile, I
(23:02):
had friends, the ones that havestuck by me, who kept saying,
oh, you know, you should do acomic about this. You know, this
is really interesting. You knowthat, you know, you're going
through this change in yourlife, and you're such a
different person now and right,talk to you. It's like that, you
know, I had people that arealways you know, oh, they're I
(23:23):
never I never would have guessedthis in a million years. But on
the same token, it also doesn'tsurprise me at all. You always
seem like you were holdingsomething back and I was having
all these people tell me overand over again. You should make
a comic out of your experiencescoming out as trans you should
do a comic about that. Surecomic about that. Um, and that's
literally the first comic stripI did was me going fine. I'm
(23:46):
gonna do a comic about it. I'mgonna do a bleeping comic about
it. Oh, wait, I can curse inthis one. Because my other
comics had all been all ages. Sothen I'm like, well fighting
these about me and I curse Socartoon DS get a curse. Love it.
And which I didn't think to askhim the beginning about the the
(24:08):
rating for this. So I've beencensoring myself.
Alex Iantaffi (24:13):
Here. Good. We have some episodes where we
curse some episodes where we'vegone to put a little warning if
this cursing it's all good.
Dee Fish (24:19):
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 trydoing a comic about this. And a
comic strip. I love all kinds ofcomics. I love doing comic books
short term, like superhero comicbooks and adventure and fantasy
comic books, you know, dramaticgraphic novels, but I love comic
(24:42):
strips. I've been wanting tomake comic strips since I was a
little little kid up. I createdthe characters that I used for
Dandy and company when I waseight years old in grade school,
and I've been drawing them forover 40 years now. These
characters are a decade old. Arethat my stepson. Um, and so I
mean, I love comic strips, andI'm like, but if I do it as if
(25:07):
I, if I do them as a comicstrip, it's not a commitment to
a series, like, I'm gonna do agraphic novel, and it's gonna
have to be x pages. A strip isjust a one off bag. So I'll just
draw strip. And by dragging as astrip, if I lean on as a humor
comic, I can try and find apunch line, find humor in these
situations that are stressing meout. find humor in the dysphoria
(25:31):
find humor in the app, the time,over an hour, it would take for
me to prepare to leave the housefor something like toilet paper,
I wouldn't just go to thesedays, I will just wake up in the
morning, throw a t shirt on andgo to the store to get groceries
(25:52):
if I need to. I don't give.
Yeah, but it took me a long timeto get there. It was early days,
you know, especially when I youknow, it was pre hormones, pre
hair removal, any of that stuff.
So I was very, very selfconscious. These days, I've been
on hormones. For years, I've hadsub certain surgeries, I've had
(26:14):
hair removal, I'm much morecomfortable in my skin, each one
of those steps makes me morecomfortable in my skin. But back
then I wasn't. So things likethat were the material for a
strip, but find the punch linein it find the joke. And more
often than not, each strip hadsome degree of humor, because my
(26:35):
thinking was, I treated it lesslike an experiment less like a
comic and more like anexperiment in self therapy. If I
can, if I can figure out a wayfor Cartoon me to smile and
laugh through this traumaticscenario, maybe real me can deal
with it better. And over time,it it's working. It's working.
(26:59):
For me, it has worked for me ina lot of respects. And figuring
out that, you know, so long asthey're just a negative
interaction with someone thatdoesn't end in physical
violence, or the police beingcalled, then it's a situation I
can find a way to turn intosomething vaguely humorous.
(27:23):
There's some kernel of humor inany of these situations, even if
it's just the exacerbation andfrustration of the repeating
cycles of that waitress thatwants to come up to the table.
And when me and Heidi are eatingand go, Okay, here's a refill on
your on your soda, sir, and yellit yell just that word at the
(27:47):
top of their lungs. And how thatsituation rectified is when
dinner was ready. It said onceyou get the car warmed up, and
I'm like, It's summer, go getthe car warmed up, you're gonna
don't say anything. This is theonly good pizza place in like
100 miles. Just go get the car.
(28:07):
10 minutes later, she comes outthe problem itself, we will
never have her again as aserver, and we never get
Alex Iantaffi (28:15):
good. I'm so glad you're supportive partner in
those kinds of situations thatcan be so stressful and hurtful.
Dee Fish (28:22):
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 myfamily who have made assumptions
that Heidi is the enabler here.
And at no point in ourrelationship, has she ever
enabled me or pushed me on thisdirection? She just let me
(28:43):
experiment let me take one stepat a time. And discover who I
am. Not just who I was, but whoI wanted to be. Which is yeah,
what led to the title of thestrip being Finding Dee? Yeah,
there was nothing about thestrip that was a calculated
(29:04):
business decision. Otherwise, Iwould have called it something
else. That didn't sound so muchlike Finding Dory and Finding
Nemo. Yes. I would have sat downand done model sheets of me and
Heidi and our dog Po from thebeginning instead of working up
a model sheet, almost a yearinto the strip. So those early
(29:24):
strips, like you can kind of seeI'm making it up as I go. I'm
figuring out the style. I'mfiguring out what we're going to
look like. And now we arestraight up cartoon characters
in the current strips. Themodels are very well defined.
They don't really look much likeus in a literal sense, but
they've kind of looked like whatwe feel like. I mean, it works.
(29:45):
I have been both of us have beenliterally picked out by people
in town because they read thecomic. That's amazing. Then
they've seen us in public and goyour Dee and Heidi. I read the
comic. I'm like, you don't seephotos of us but you recognized
us from my wonky drawing.
Writing. Okay, that's, that'sthe thing that's happening,
Alex Iantaffi (30:03):
while your drawings are pretty amazing, and
I love what you said about kindof making it up as you were, as
you went along, because I feelso much of transition, honestly,
at least for me, was kind ofmaking 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 moreconfident, like you said, you
(30:25):
know, at the beginning, therewas so much heartache, and then
you're like, I'm just gonna goto the store, you know, and not
spend like, a lot of timegetting ready or trying to kind
of cater to other people'sexpectations, which is
wonderful. And I love what yousaid, as well about Finding Dee
being like self therapy, I thinkthat creating can be such a
(30:47):
healing thing. And I wonder ifyou've heard from other trans
women, especially about whatFinding Dee has meant to them.
Or if you've ever kind of hadinteractions with kind of trans
men about what the cartoon meansto them.
Dee Fish (31:05):
I have, it was something that I never would
have expected, I never wouldhave given a second thought to
when I started this. Again, it'sjust this thing that I thought
was going to be this little funexperiment that I never thought
would be the comic. That's thething I've been working on for
six, six plus years nowregularly with a weekly strip.
(31:25):
I've got you know, I think I'vegot 300 of these things in the
can by now. And I never thoughtof it beyond that. So when I
started getting messages realearly on, from other transgender
people, male, female, nonbinary, all expressing I saw
(31:50):
myself in that story in thatsequence in that one joke. A lot
of people it turns out that alot of the experiences that in
my brain were trans specific,were just universal. Fresh, like
(32:10):
I would be frustrated going andsearching for clothes. And here
I am a 41 learning about howthat crazy women's clothes sizes
are. There's no universalstandard from garment to
garment. And I had lived thefirst 40 years of my life, you
know, presenting male somewhatagainst my will. I was damned
(32:32):
easy shopping. You know, thewaist size of those pants were
measured in inches. Yes, that'sit. You know, now you literally
every store has a differentmeasuring guide, and you have to
try everything on and make youfeel bad about it. And these are
things that I discovered at 41That to me were relevant story,
(32:53):
but then I'd have you know,cisgender women say oh my god,
yes, say my hate that that sucksso bad. Or I did one real early
on. It was the first trip I didthat blew up and it was about
me. I have started with medressed as like Tomb Raider
slash Indiana Jones going onthis adventure in this like,
hidden, hidden caverns of doomand mystery, all to find the
(33:16):
Holy Grail of a bra that is bothcute, fits, and is cheap. Oh,
yeah. And that one struck anerve. And that's when I
realized that the experiences Iwas telling were very universal.
But yeah, I've had a lot ofpeople who come up to me at
comic book conventions, or whohave messaged me, who have said
(33:37):
things that are honestlyhumbling to me, they put me into
they put into a very, very realperspective that this comic that
I'm drawing that I originallydidn't think of as anything
other than therapy for myselfhas been therapy for other
people. That it has a meaningthat I have. You know, and I
(33:59):
hate to say it in terms thatmake it sound lofty, but I have
touched people with this andit's not something I was
prepared to do. Emotionally itfreaks me out a little bit
because I was very much like ano, I'm just the haha look funny
drawing. Um, you know, I wasn'tprepared for that. But I have
(34:20):
heard that a lot I've had, I'vehad parents come up to me at
events, we vended at both comicconventions and at pride events.
And we've had parents come up tome and they flip through and
they're like, oh, my gosh, thisis amazing. You know, my kid is
telling me that they're transand I, I would love to show this
(34:42):
to them. The number one questionI always get asked, Is this
appropriate? And I'm like, onthe covers of all the books that
I've done, it always sayscontains naughty words. But
that's it. That's the onlycaveat that I'd say. I'd say
that's well. There's cursing inthere because I curse It's part
of my life. And it's a part ofthe experience. And I've kind of
(35:04):
gotten to take gotten to thepoint of saying, you know, as
harsh of a reality as it is, ifyou have a child who is coming
out as transgender, they'regoing to have to learn how to
navigate the F word, becausethey're going to be hearing it
weaponized against them a lot.
Alex Iantaffi (35:21):
Absolutely. And, you know, as my kids would say,
that probably those kids areprobably heard much worse, in
middle school already, or evenin school nowadays. So I don't
mean, the curious thing isnecessarily off putting to young
people. But I think, you know, Ilove what you said about just
(35:42):
you were creating this just foryourself, but then it did touch
people, which I'm not surprisedbecause of representation is so
important, right? You just hadfor people kind of, I think
we're close in age of ourgeneration that really wasn't
representation. Right? And so toI don't know, for you, but for
me, every time I see, transrepresentation is like, my heart
(36:02):
grows, like five sizes, right?
And then I want to recommend itto people, because I know that
people are looking forresources. You know, even even
if it's just a cartoon in airquotes, it's so much more than a
cartoon for people. I think it'sseen themselves. Yes, seeing
themselves mean so much to somany people.
Dee Fish (36:25):
Yeah, it's once I realized the scope of it, and
it's something Heidi helped mewith in terms of our everyday
life. Like, the first night,after I'd come out to everybody,
like everyone who knew me knewthe first night, we went out to
dinner, she helped me getdressed, she put my makeup on.
(36:47):
But we went out to dinner, andthen we walked around Walmart
for a while. And I, I deal witha lot of social anxiety, I don't
like to say I have socialanxiety, because I feel like
using that terminology givesgives the anxiety more power. I
deal with social anxiety. Thisis a mental trick for me, I try
(37:08):
not to use the terminology ofsaying I, I have depression, I
have social anxiety, I've beendiagnosed with them. I know I,
I'm dealing with them. It's aphrasing that I'm going a little
tangential. But it's a part ofthe overall story. It's, I try
not to say it that way. Becausea I don't want to define that as
a part of my identity. I don'twant to and I don't want it to
(37:30):
be an excuse for my behavior. IfI'm dealing with a lot of them.
I have to have, I it's importantto me that I didn't want to have
to change my life that much tothe degree that I want to still
do the things that Heidi and Ihave always done. We go to
karaoke religiously. It's ourit's our crack. You know, we
(37:55):
love to go out to eat. There areyou know, neither of us are
skinny for a reason. You know,we like to go out, we're having
a nice date day, this Sundaycoming up, and we're looking
forward to it, I am veryvisible. And I realized that
that really what that visibilityis important. Because all anyone
ever sees of Heidi and I arejust a couple going out and
(38:19):
doing normal things. We go tothe grocery store, we go to
karaoke, we go to therestaurants, we're on the Art
Council, where you know, we goto the, we do all these
different things in our town.
And another thing that becamekind of humbling was that I was
the only transgender out personthat I knew in our little city
(38:39):
here in very rural WesternPennsylvania. And I lost track
of how many that we haveencountered 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 withthat. But I don't, I'm not a big
fan of self delusion in thatregard. And especially when it's
hurtful to yourself on purpose,and that is I am partly
(39:03):
responsible for that I am very,very visible. And just like my
general life and my strip is allabout just presenting. This is
me. I'm just a person. I'm adork. I love I love cartoons and
comics and you know, the plateyou'll find me more and more
(39:27):
often than anywhere else on thetoy aisle at at our local
Walmart or in the graphic novelsection 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'tchanged when I came out and just
expanded the number of toys Ifelt comfortable buying. So
yeah, record. There's that sideof me that has to remind myself
(39:54):
that the representation aspectof the strip and is just As
important as the the way we liveour everyday lives. I don't
consider myself overtly activistit in the sense that I'm not
walking around kicking in doors.
(40:15):
I'm just walking through them,I'm just trying to exist the
same way I did before. And havethat be a thing that people
understand is just the way itis. That's just the reality. I
am this person, I am the I'mgonna come in and eat and, you
know, I still get crappy looks,we still get, you know, dirty
(40:38):
stares from people and, youknow, angry glares. But I
noticed them less and less. or,more accurately, I dwell on them
less than less, I still havethat mentality of situational
awareness. You know, I can go tothe bathroom by myself these
days, but I don't ever gowithout my purse and my phone.
So if I have to have my ID onme, and if I have to call for
(40:59):
help, I can. Yeah. But I'm stillaware of that. But I don't. I
don't walk in like I'mcommitting a crime anymore. You
know, because I was so terrifiedfor the longest time of what
other people's expectationswere. And that's gotten
terrible. I mean, I came out inJanuary of 2016. Of all the
(41:23):
years to come out. I came out inthe year that this exploded.
Yeah, the year that the bathroomhysteria started. Yeah, the year
that it became a politicaltalking point to the nth degree
I came out then. And it's justone of those things. I'm like,
Are you kidding me? Really? Iwaited 41 years, and it just
(41:46):
happened to coincide with Trump.
Yeah. And everything that's comeout of the political machines,
trying to demonize transgenderpeople and turn us into, you
know, the world's new Boogeyman.
Yeah. And it's, it's insanelyfrustrating. You know, I know
(42:12):
that realistically speaking, youknow, there's a part of me that
wishes I could go back in timeand tell myself to come out
later. But I also know the worldwasn't there yet. You know,
would have been that much harderto do anything, I wouldn't be in
the position I'm in now. I'm ina comfortable position. You
know, my, my, I have a day job.
My boss met me after coming out.
(42:34):
So there's no issues with that.
whatsoever. She's beenremarkably supportive of
everything in that regard. It'sa that's not a factor of
anything I worry about. And Iknow if I find new job, I'm
gonna throw myself right backout there. You know, I know that
when I came out, I actually, Iactually got my rates cut by my
(42:55):
then main client, ironically, tothe national. Ironically, I got
my rates cut to the nationalaverage of women versus men's
salaries. It was kind ofamazing. Right away, I suddenly
was worth less to somebody thatI've been working with for
decades. Yeah. It's so weirdhow, you know, you don't think
(43:15):
about the pink tax until youhave to pay it. But it got its
real.
Alex Iantaffi (43:20):
Oh, absolutely.
So Real. And let's talk, youknow, we're gonna talk about
that visibility a little bitmore, because Trans Day of
visibility is coming up. And youliterally came out under in a
very visible way as a comicartist that's right later in
life in this very visible way.
In the cartoon that you weredrawing at the time, and what
(43:43):
was it like to kind of do it insuch a public way? And some way
and what does this thatvisibility mean to you now?
Dee Fish (43:53):
I'm doing it very public in my comics, and then
changing the focus of at leastthe main comic I was working on
to be about that was somethingthat was kind of a double edged
sword. On one hand, it was veryempowering. Made me feel like
you know, okay, I'm telling astory that's worth telling. I'm
telling a story that only I cantell from this point of view.
(44:17):
And people seem to enjoy it. SoI started putting more and more
emphasis on finding d as itstarted to kind of blowing up on
social media and people startedpaying much more attention and
I'm like, okay, wasn't what Iwas planning on being the
artistic focus, but I'm going toput my artistic focus on this
project for now. And it beingI'd already been like, before
(44:42):
moving up to Pennsylvania, welived in Florida for years and I
was a regular mainstay of thecomic book convention circuit in
Florida. I went to all the majorshows. I was an invited guest to
a good chunk of the biggestshows where I wasn't paying for
my table anymore. I'd become atleast moderately successful
enough to get my foot in thedoor in that regard. And so, you
(45:06):
know, I very early on got toencounter a good degree of
jealousy from people and a lotof backstabbing, I'd find out
from other from friends thatfrom shows I wasn't going to
that I was a topic ofconversation, where people were
accusing me of this my entirelifestyle being a publicity
stunt just to sell these comics.
That's rough. And, um, and it'sone of those things where it's
(45:29):
like, yeah, that's why I havesubmitted myself to taking going
to fit to a mandatory therapy sothat I could get hormones and
surgery legally go through thehoops it takes to change my
name. I'm getting laser hairremoval, getting chunks of my
anatomy removed. I'm goingthrough the idea that every time
(45:54):
I leave the house, I have toworry whether or not somebody is
going to accuse me of a crime ortry to get me to say nothing of
just getting stairs gettingscreamed at when I come out of
the bathroom in public. Yeah, Idid all of those. Because I knew
one day I was going to be on thegender stories podcast. You
(46:15):
know, it's like, really are you?
It's as ridiculous as the peoplethat claim that transgender
people are doing this simply toto get into restrooms and
assault women. Oh, my God, likethe doors like the doors are
guarded now. Why on earth wouldanyone go through the trouble to
(46:37):
make themselves this much morevisible when you if somebody
wants first off anything? Anyonethat they would say and oh,
they're gonna do this and theyget to restrooms and assault
women. The Assault is alreadyillegal.
Alex Iantaffi (46:49):
And assaults are already happening. There's
plenty of cis men already canfreely walk into women's
bathroom and assault people. Soit's so so bad happens
Dee Fish (47:00):
all the time. Yeah, what they're what they what
they've turned into a politicaltalking point never happens.
Exactly. I think I think thatthere's a grand total of like,
two instances in the last 20years that has been that has
been recorded. Statisticallyspeaking, that's non existent.
Absolutely. Yeah. You know, but,you know, the idea is enough
(47:22):
that legislation needs to bepassed 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, forme, my visibility, my being
being out there, putting mycomic book out there promoting
my comic book, just like it'sany other comic book, promoting
it and putting it out thereselling it at shows, you know,
(47:46):
doing whatever interviews I canget to help promote it the same
way I would for any other comicand 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'sit. I changed the road I was on,
you know, I pick the road thatis both bumpier and smoother at
(48:06):
the same time. It's bumpy or totraverse, but the car rides so
much better. I love that. That'sa great description.
Thank you. It's like I got myshots fixed. Yeah. Yeah, it's
that visibility to me is reallyimportant because it benefits
(48:29):
not just me, but everyone elsewho'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, Ican't sit here and pretend that
I don't have a certain degree ofan impact with what I do. The
numbers may not be massive, Imay not be you know, the biggest
(48:51):
hit out there by any stretch ofthe imagination, in terms of
being a fiscal success withthis, but the comic is finding
people and people arediscovering the comic, and they
are, it is helping peopleunderstand who they are and who
they want to be. I have hadpeople tell me that they have
found the strength to come outbecause of a comic strip I drew,
(49:14):
I took maybe an hour and a halfon helped change the course of
someone's life. And that is thatis weighty. And that is the kind
of thing that makes me want tocurl up in a blanket and be
like, I don't want to face theworld because this is a little
bit too big. You know, but I'vealso dealt with, you know, I've
(49:35):
had people who used to getcommissions from me at comic
conventions, you know, tell methat they've torn up every piece
of art that they spent money onbuying from me because I
discussed them. I've had peoplethat smile to my face at comic
book conventions, talk shitabout me behind my back and try
to make me look bad and Youknow, there's both sides of that
(50:00):
story visibility is visibilityis a double edged sword. Because
the more visible you are, themore you have to absorb. So the
more hits that the more hitsthat will come your way the The
brighter the light on you, youknow, the more moths are going
to come after you, the moremosquitoes are going to land on.
(50:22):
Yeah.
Alex Iantaffi (50:25):
And it's it's such a Yeah, absolutely such a
terrible double edged swordbecause like you said that
visibility can also reallyilluminate the path for some
people, right? And really,that's what some, you know,
transforms need to like come outor to discover themselves. And
at the same time, the morevisible we are, the more makes
(50:47):
us a target, as well for forpeople who have the exact
opposite agenda. Absolutely.
What is some I know we're kindof coming close to the end of
our time. But I'm curious aboutwhat would you say to trans
folks, and especially transwomen who might be reluctant to
come out later in life, I knowthat I've often heard people,
you know, and I came out in my30s, as well. But I've worked
(51:09):
with people and I've seen peoplein 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 (51:27):
I would say, you know, obviously, you need to come out,
as soon as it's something you'reready 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 comeout sooner, I wish I would have
accepted this part of myselfsooner, and stop throwing
obstacles in my way to say, thisis why I can't do this, this is
(51:52):
why I can't do that. It's, it'ssuch a weird statement, the best
I can usually do is just try totell my own story. That way, I'm
not telling somebody what to do.
Because I feel reallyuncomfortable with that idea.
Especially because I've hadpeople especially younger people
(52:14):
come to me and ask me thesequestions. And I will never
straight up, you know, I'm nevergonna say this is what you
should do. Because then all of asudden, that label of, you know,
our groomers get to patched andterrible
Alex Iantaffi (52:27):
lady. Yeah, absolutely.
Dee Fish (52:30):
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 Iknew, you know, it's, it's
inherent, we have an idea ofwhat we are and what we are
supposed to be, our gender issomething that we are aware of,
(52:53):
on a level that can't bedescribed in the same way that a
cisgender man or woman has neverhad to debate that they are a
man or a woman and, you know, ifthey're, if they're, if their
reproductive organs had beenremoved, or they've been in an
accident, and they losteverything between their legs,
(53:15):
they would still know what theywere, it doesn't have to do with
it doesn't have to do with thepackage, it has to do with who
you are, we have this inherentsense of knowledge of it. And I
knew right away from a very,very young age, for maybe, that
(53:35):
what I was being told I was wasnot what I knew I was I knew
right away, and I triedexpressing it from a very young
age. And it was not accepted.
You know, I was I was made funof at home I was laughed at, I
learned how to put that into alittle container and keep it
locked away and not talk aboutit and not, you know, bring it
up, lock that stuff inside. Andthen you know, you grow up, you
(53:58):
grow up and you kept that in abox for a really long time to
the degree that you're notthinking about it anymore, but
for every now and again, thatlittle pop culture leak over
that movie character that makesyou feel a little uncomfortable
in a familiar way and you'relike No, no, I can't do that.
You know, and then puberty hitsand here I am I sprout up to six
(54:20):
to six three. You know, I'm highto high to hundreds in my
weight. I'm physically built onwide, wide built chest and you
know you look at yourself in themirror and you just feel like
you know betrayed by your ownbody as you go through this
(54:42):
puberty you know that's why I'mso I get the one thing I do get
a little activity about is thatwe're there. You've got all
these motions to try to suppresshormone blockers. I'm like
that's like a that's a deathsentence for a lot of people
because what hormones Whathormones do to our body is
irreversible? Exactly. You know,I, I put a certain degree of
(55:06):
effort, not a lot of effort intovoice training. Because there is
no amount of hormones that aregoing to change what
testosterone did to my voice.
You know, I liked the term, Iliked the term of the idea that
I, you know, I'm dealing withthe effects of testosterone
poisoning, and what it did to mybody, it is irreversible. You
(55:29):
know, there are certain thingsyou can do surgically, but you
can't change what that happened.
Once it's happened, it'shappened. And a huge chunk of
us, a very large percentage ofus knew really early on. Oh,
yeah. And we may have had peopletrying to tell us, we were
wrong, we may have tried tellingourselves we were wrong, because
(55:50):
it would be so hard and youdon't want to lose everything
you've got, oh, I've got a job.
I've got friends, I've gotfamily, and I'm going to lose
them. If I come out. I wasterrified. 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
(56:12):
have somebody say, Oh, well, youknow, there are really tall
women in the WNBA. Or, orthey'll say something like, you
know, what about the Amazons?
And I'm like, they're fictional.
Thank you,
Alex Iantaffi (56:22):
I usually say model height. You know, when
you're over six feet, yourmother height.
Dee Fish (56:27):
You know, I'm like, I can point to like, what
Gwendoline Christie is tallerthan me. Yay. I love Gwendoline
Christie, don't get me wrong.
But by and large, there's onlyone person in this entire region
that I live in. That is the sameheight as I am that cisgender
woman. That's it, I still towerover a lot of people, I tell her
over a lot of men in this area.
(56:52):
And so that made me selfconscious. And that was a
roadblock. And that's how Iwould that's how I tried to word
it is that at the end of theday, passing is not the idea of
passing, it just can be a verymuch a toxic mind work because
it gets into your brain, thatidea isn't important. It's being
(57:15):
true to yourself, being who youknow you are, is worth the
external sources of stress thatwill come to you. Because at the
end of the day, having the senseof confidence of I made this
choice to embrace who I knew Ialways was removed a lot of the
(57:39):
interior stress and at the endof the day, there is nothing
that's going to tear you downmore than the bad things you
tell yourself far more thansomething somebody else is going
to tell you. We do a lot ofdamage to ourselves. And by
coming out, I took a lot ofpower from those voices. Yeah,
I've got voices out in the worldwho are willing to tell you all
(58:01):
kinds of messed up things, but Ican't control that. I can show
them they're wrong. By living mylife my way by living my life
and my truth and being out thereand being being seen being
visible and being noticed and,and telling my specific story.
You know, through my comic, Ican prove them wrong. But I
(58:23):
can't change their mind rightthere in the moment. And it
doesn't matter. You know, at theend of the day, I can't. I live
40 years of my life, trying tomake other people comfortable.
And, you know, seven years ago,I turned 41, which gives you an
idea of my age. And you know, Ihave never once regretted that
(58:49):
decision. I have regrettedthings that have happened. I
have regretted other people'sreactions, I have regretted
learning things about otherpeople that, you know, I've
grown I've grown distant from alot of a lot of people who just
were never able to getcomfortable with this. Yeah. And
that's not my responsibility.
Absolutely. I didn't removemyself from their lives. You
(59:10):
know, I just, you know, you canonly be true to yourself. And if
this is your truth, it's thething that embracing it can make
you feel comfortable in a waythat keeping it locked in a
bottle can't Yeah, I can onlytell people, I chose to embrace
(59:31):
what I knew to be true in spiteof the physical obstacles of my
height, my size, the depth of myvoice, you know, it's that, you
know, a lot of things that canbe, you know, adjusted over time
with hormones and training andthings like that to where it
becomes more second nature.
(59:52):
That's fine. That's all wellgood and fine. But none of those
physical obstacles that Ithought were the most Important
thing in the world turned out tobe very important at all, once I
made the decision to be who Iwas who I knew I already was.
Absolutely, that would be what Iwould tell somebody, I would
tell them what it did for me.
Alex Iantaffi (01:00:12):
That's so beautiful. Thank you for sharing
that with the gender stories,listeners. And my last question
is usually, is there anything wehave not talked about that you
wanted to share?
Dee Fish (01:00:26):
I'm not really I mean, we talked about the werewolf
books. I'm always excited totalk about those there. That's
my big new toy. I can't wait forthe first one to actually be out
in print, because I've gotten alot of really great feedback
from folks on it, who reallyloved it. And I'm super excited
about that. I'm still working onfinding d weekly that runs every
(01:00:48):
Wednesday at finding dcomic.com. D finding d
comic.com. runs every Wednesdaynew comics can find all find out
all about everything going onall the weird little details I
have told. I have told the storyof my archy ectomy in the comic
strip, I have told the story ofmy breast enhancement, which was
(01:01:09):
just last year. But also I'vetold the stories of Oh, we got
cats. And that's a huge cluster.
They're adorable, but they makeme bleed. So it's, it's about
that it's about life. And youknow, I would love more people
to read it and spread the word.
Right now. Through the comiccompany unlikely heroes studios,
(01:01:29):
we are running a Kickstarterthis week that ends on the 14th
or the 13th. of February, for acolor collection. We are
currently at stretch goals now.
So we made our initial goal, ortrying to get stretch goals
covered. And that's a collectionof about 80 to 80 pages of comic
strips and full color for thefirst time. In print that way
(01:01:51):
for the first time, which I'mreally excited about and that is
at you HSUUH studios.com forwardslash, kick it and then the
number two, so you hstudios.com. Forward slash kick
it to wonder and that's theKickstarter. That's the
(01:02:15):
Kickstarter for the colorcollection of all the first
strips.
Alex Iantaffi (01:02:19):
And I'll make sure that I put all of this
links in the Episode Notes sothat your listener can find all
those links. And if peoplewanted to follow you on social
media, or find your website, doyou have any handles that they
should look out for on Instagramor Twitter.
Dee Fish (01:02:37):
Most of them are just D fish or D Brisby. Fish like
Facebook and Twitter and allthat stuff. I don't make it hard
to find me I try to make it aseasy as possible. Also, all my
social media is linked throughthe main website, which is the
Tumblr page for which is findingv comic.com. Or just finding
(01:02:59):
d.com I got both URLs they'lltake you to the website and all
the way at the bottom is all thelinks to my social media if you
want to follow me I post allkinds of I got a Patreon where I
do rough sketches and I show thethe preview art for the next
week strip and you get to seestrips a week in advance and you
(01:03:19):
can read up to I think currentlyI think 21 chapters of my first
werewolf book are up there thefirst for free.
Alex Iantaffi (01:03:28):
That's exciting.
Dee Fish (01:03:30):
That's that's, that's patreon.com forward slash big
pond comics, which you can alsofind that I got so many
websites. The novel's website islycanthropy. A and the single
girl.com It's long but the booktitles long
Alex Iantaffi (01:03:47):
works is very clear, very easy to find. Well,
the it has been such a pleasureto have you on gender stories.
Thank you so much for making thetime to be interviewed today.
And dear listeners. Until nextepisode, keep being true to
yourself and thank you forlistening. Thank you
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