Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-48285-20161205164344/@comment-26871067-20170212065126

Jaadowgg wrote: Is "human" a term solely for Earthlings? What if there were beings exactly like us on a different world (all hypothetical until proven, obviously)? Would we not call them "human"? It's an apt question, honestly. If we were to go to space and meet a species that is physically identical to us in basically every way (including, presumably, genetically), yeah I don't think it would be incorrect to call them human since there's no real distinction. Unless they took affront to us showing up and deciding our word was the right one. Maybe they call themselves gorknar and think we're assholes for calling them a word besides their name for their species.

But what I was getting at more was the apparently long-debated question of "does Star Wars take place in the distant past of our universe as implied by the title crawl, or is this truly a parallel universe where humanity originated on another planet despite said title crawl". The answer is, presumably, "George Lucas didn't think about it that much", and I honestly think the only sensible explanation is "it's a parallel universe", in which case yeah sure they're just humans and all of it meshes and there's no suspension of disbelief necessary.

Of course, it's a sci-fi fantasy as well as being a fictional narrative in general, so any serious discussion of it should keep in mind the reality of author oversight when creating a universe and, in my opinion, is doomed to fall into a spiral of "but how is this possible" if we don't acknowledge this and go "okay yeah it's just coincidence for the sake of a coherent story".