<div class="quoteheader"><div class="topslice_quote"><a href="https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=113409.msg4963669#msg4963669">Quote from: Healergirl on 22-07-2011, 20:35:21</a></div></div><blockquote class="bbc_standard_quote">Carni,<br/><br/>If you don't mind me asking, how on earth did you pick CarnivalOfTheGoat as your handle?<br/></blockquote><div class="quotefooter"><div class="botslice_quote"></div></div><br/>It's a couple of things, really. I have a few silly goat masks that I've had just forever...Since I was a kid, if ewe'll excuse my saying so. ;)<br/><br/>Goats are sort of a bizarre combination of a domesticated animal AND a symbol of sexuality/decadence/evil/what have you depending on the culture. In a single religion they are both the representation of innocent, helpless sacrifice AND a symbol of malignant evil...A very, very peculiar duality!<br/><br/>The particular phrase came out of one of the most recent games I've been interested in, Eclipse Phase (http://www.eclipsephase.com/), which actually HAS a setting called 'The Carnival of the Goat' (alright, it's a floating anarchist colony on a spaceship) and that sort of conjoins all of the peculiarities of innocent fun, sinister decadence and dark mythology which are attendant to carnivals (if you don't know what I'm referring to, DO read Bradbury's<em>Dark Carnival </em>and<em>October People </em>work, particularly<em>'Something Wicked This Way Comes'</em>, I've yet to meet the person who didn't enjoy the latter).<br/><br/>It's something of a callback to Halloween as a child, back in the 70s, when things were scary for all the<em>right</em>, fun reasons as opposed to the parentally paranoid reasons. Which goes back to the masks, and subconscious symbolism and...Yeah. It's semiotically convoluted, isn't it?<br/><br/>But then, if it was obvious, you'd never have asked!<br/><br/>Off to the story-forum I go!