Trans Megathread for the Week of 2025-01-06 to 2025-01-12 - Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Children of Time is a 2015 science fiction novel by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

In the distant future, humanity seeks to create new habitats for itself on distant planets, terraforming them and seeding them with life. Dr. Avrana Kern is heading one such project, orbiting the tentatively named "Kern's World", where the plan is to release monkeys le-monke infected with a nanovirus that will accelerate their evolution. Through an act of sabotage from an anti-technology group that has also destroyed much of Earth, the monkeys are never released, and the virus instead infects a species of spider, Portia labiata. The book follows the evolution of the spiders and their eventual civilisation, as well as a remnant of humanity that fled to Kern's World hoping to find paradise.

also children of ruin and children of memory, the sequels, are really good

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Lord help me quit TikTok. I’m so tired of the weird prescriptivism that invades queer discourse there. And what happened to the trans prime directive? Every single video with someone saying eggy shit is full of comments just telling that person they’re trans and to start hormones. And it understandably freaks people out. It’s the same 3 egg jokes over and over and the person gets absolutely no support because people are too busy making inside jokes. Not to mention everyone jumping straight to the person being not only trans, but binary trans.
- imo the trans prime directive is lame but there's definitely a right way and a wrong way to go about things. and can't imagine being bombarded by tiktok comments is the right way
  
  imo the trans prime directive is lame
  
  Can you say more? I can understand why you’d ignore it if it’s someone you know whose asking you pretty directly, but other than that it seems valid to me.
  
  it amounts to just rolling over and letting cisnormativity win imo. telling people they're probably trans is fine and good and should be a go-to. if they turn out to not be then there's no major harm done, at worst you've gotten someone to think a bit more about their gender which is good. if they are trans then you've saved a life from repression or worse. people are conditioned to think there's no other option than being cis, a lot of the time they need direct telling that there is. now i can imagine it's not being done with the most tact and compassion through tiktok comments, there's obviously a right and a wrong way to approach it but "prime directive" seems regressive to me. I don't buy into that at all.
  
  Cisness is forced upon most trans people before they realise they’re trans and the prime directive kind of implies that that’s ok while the same in the opposite direction (telling someone they’re trans) is wrong. Nobody should really tell anyone whether they’re trans or cis but in a world where everyone is told they’re cis from the beginning it should be okay to suggest someone may actually be trans.
  
  The whole thing feels like a way to silence trans people into sharing their experiences. If someone says something that you think screams egg due to your own experiences or experiences from someone close to you then you should absolutely be able to say that. Telling someone they’re trans while they insist they’re cis can be pretty disrespectful but that has nothing to do with the prime directive.
  
  Idk if I voiced this right, I’m still practicing on how to communicate my view on this.
  
  i think you put it really well and i totally agree!
  
  basically i would have loved for anyone to maybe just tell me that i might be trans. even just putting the idea in my head would have been nice
- It’s the same 3 egg jokes over and over and the person gets absolutely no support
  
  doesn't seem like shit has changed since i uninstalled. i think people on there are too conditioned to the whole "follow up video resolves everything" thing, so expect to see someone fully come to terms with an earth-shattering concept like being trans on-demand (lol maybe they should all read Nevada). egg prime directive should seriously be respected tho
  
  i've actually been so much happier after getting off the app but finding things that fill the attention void is the most challenging part. i support your endeavour to quit
  
  I just uninstalled. I’ll let you know if I make it more than a day before reinstalling haha

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