I really need to thank shoutbox/forum member zaira, who unwittingly gave me the inspiration the end of this comic... and indeed the title. The phrase "man-womanish" actually appears in Dionysus' Wikipedia entry, and it's a delightful phrase indeed. So thanks, zaira, for helping me to end a comic that I really didn't know how to end.

It's only now that I'm reading about Dionysus in detail that I'm coming to realise what an interesting character he is/was. He was sort of 'promoted' to one of the twelve Olympians after Hestia left in a huff because she thought (and it's hard not to have some sympathy for her here) that the other Gods were a bunch of petty morons. So Dionysus was replacing a woman in a group that was originally split evenly along gender lines, and he seems to have had something of a feminine touch himself. If that statue at the top of his Wikipedia article's anything to go by, he was almost the Bridget of the ancient world, visible winkie or no visible winkie.

And then, of course, there's the Gallae, who are just fascinating for all sorts of reasons. There's all manner of interpretations about who they really were and what their modern day 'equivalent' would be... as usual with this comic, I've taken one interpretation that I like and run with it. Still, they're well worth reading up on if you're interested in gender attitudes in antiquity. Fascinating people... and yes, the castration business is entirely true.

Hmm. Sometimes I have to take a step back and consider just how much of my time is spent either talking or making comics about genitals...