It is funny that youn mention the Aura chronicles, Samira, which state the special veneration poets receive in Amarr society. Yes, Excena Foer got into trouble.
But that's not the point: Itzak Barah was supposedly a religious poet. That entire profession of religious poetry is based on restating religious truths with differing, artistic words. They were by PF previous to EVE: Source highly valued members of Amarr culture exactly for this particular ability. This went so far that he had the authority to authorize Excena Foer's version even against the majorities whishes that were a-sympathetic to a non-believer doing what Itzak's profession does.
So, the problem can't have been, previous to EVE: Source, that she was restating religious truth. The problem must have been a non-believer doing it. Else Itzak Barah would have been guilty of the same thing. Now E:S is stating that Amarr have a strong preference for strictly visual arts, to the point that:
art and beauty lie in the visual depictions of the truths that have already been recorded in words, rather than trying to rephrase those truths in different words. Indeed, it appears that the general feeling is that any attempt to do so would not only be useless but also rather unseemly - if not outright sacrilegous.
(emphasis added by me)
Now, this really disqualifies the previously celebrated profession of the religious poet. It is also producing an unnecessary, previously not existing clash between PF. And even if E:S is to be considered authoritative, then this newly established fact has been set in stone by malpractice of writing, tbh, as it'd be a retcon for no appearent reason at all.
It does, by the way, also disqualify all Scriptural theology, as this is, by necessity, rephrasing of religious truth, just not (necessarily) artistically, but rather scholarly. The same goes for religious education. Both instances are explaining religious text and explaining means (amongst other things) rephrasing the meaning of the text (the 'truths') in different words than the text uses by itself.
Now, the Dark Horse site says: "Developed in close collaboration with the EVE and DUST 514 creative teams,..." If that is true, it can't be entirely true that Dark Horse is merely the publisher. Anyway, that Falcon said to you in a personal convo that E:S takes precedence is really of no concern in regard to whether it is a good idea to take E:S as authoritative. I think there are many good reasons to take it - just like TonyG's literature -
cum grano salis.
As to the book mainly summarizing and repeating what was established for the Amarr and that being no problem, I agree wholeheartedly. I didn't count, but I'd guess I find nothing wrong with 90% of the sentences in the book and the artwork is stunning. And it's good for you that you are happy with what they wrote- that doesn't mean that it's not partly malpractice in writing for a world that should be qualified by consistence, coherence and continuity. But a book that is 90% summary and repeat, 10% changes and new things and of these 5% are unnecessary changes to the PF that come totally out of the blue or stuff that unnecessarily breaks down the dimensionality of the setting, isn't a book I can be happy with.
And I'm not alone with that assessment. We didn't accept what we got from TonyG and I don't see any reason to do so any more with the stuff in E:S if it's TonyG-esque.
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Topic: I need some input from you kind wonderful folks. (Read 8890 times)