Free fic idea to a good home, because I have too many plot bunnies destroying the ecosystem of my brain as it is:
Shen Yuan is a trans woman, but doesn't know it yet, still an egg. Then, Shen Yuan transmigrates into the body of Shen Qingqiu... which doesn't have the anatomy he was expecting the man to have. What he doesn't know is that Shen Jiu was a trans man, and took great pains to ensure no one ever found that out.
The first thing Shen Yuan feels is a strong sense of relief (obviously because he won't have to die, because Binghe would never kill a woman!) Then, he's confused. If Shen Jiu was a "woman" the whole time, then why didn't "she" tell everyone the truth? Shen Jiu could have avoided every single death flag of the story if everyone (and especially Binghe) has only known Shen Jiu was a woman! Well, Shen Yuan refuses to make the same mistake.
Without thinking about it much further than that, Shen Qingqiu "detransitions" and tells everyone she's a woman. She does a lot of mental gymnastics to explain why she's happier like this, mostly centering around successfully avoiding her fate, and probably a few sexist takes about gender roles or something. But, for the most part, she simply does not think about it.
Then Shang Qinghua shows up. Shen Qingqiu's logic completely baffles him. (In this AU, optionally I think Shang Qinghua could also be trans, or trans in his past life, but he could also just be understanding as a queer person himself.) He says, "So you were male in your past life. You show up here with different parts, but the original goods already did all the hard work of socially transitioning, so you could have kept being a man if you wanted. But instead, you're a woman now? What gives?" Shen Qingqiu tries to explain her reasoning, but Shang Qinghua just calls her out for her flawed thinking on multiple levels, leaving Shen Qingqiu hurt, confused, and spiraling.
In short, the premise of this fic is, what choice would Shen Yuan make if the two choices on offer were trans man or cis woman? And if it's the latter, could she grow enough as a person to be truthful with herself, to acknowledge she would have chosen to be a trans woman if only she'd been capable of viewing it as a serious option? This fic would mostly be canon divergent, I think, with Shen Yuan eventually acknowledging she genuinely wants to be a woman, and coming to terms with all of her own wrong-headedness.
I've been thinking about this idea for a long time, it just needed to get out of my head before I went nuts. Hope someone else enjoys it!
