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"Humans without Earth" - Is this tropeworthy?

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Totema Since: Oct, 2010
#1: Jan 7th 2021 at 11:24:54 PM

I'm not talking about a case where human civilization lives on despite Earth's destruction or lack of habitability — that's closer to Earth That Was. I'm talking about works that feature humans as a prominent people despite no evidence that Earth was even in the universe. An example that sticks out the most to me (really, it's the one that made me think about this in the first place) is in Star Wars. Humans are everywhere, they're even explicitly referred to as Homo sapiens in some Legends works, but Earth isn't mentioned at all.

This might be interesting to explore, because it shows an audience what a human civilization might look like if it had none of the baggage from our own history. Or, this might be an umbrella that's too big to fit into one trope. Does the setting need to accommodate for other extraplanetary species, or can fantasy worlds count for this? Do the "humans" need to be explicitly called human, or is something like "hume" (from Final Fantasy's Ivalice setting) close enough? If the humans' home is sufficiently Earth-like without being called as such, would that count too? Questions like these make me hesitant to take to the TLP right away.

I'm of a split mind on this, because I think it could lead to some interesting discussion but I'm unsure if it all belongs in one spot. What do you guys think?

coconutkirin F Since: Dec, 2020
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