KINGSHIP
swanchime
can two gods/girls/men fall in love and win again?
ー♔♚ー
KINGSHIP follows in the footsteps of the Chinese philosopher who once said, "Is the man dreaming he is a butterfly, or is a butterfly dreaming he is a man?" in the ethereal heavens where queer gods play games and place bets on who will win, human sorrow and regret or immortal love and hope.
Yue Xianming (he/she) is represented by the goshawk, who is a single-mindedly obsessive bird of prey that soars high in the sky to sight prey from above, whereas her lover Qian Zhouyu (he/him) is a girl in denial, represented by the butterfly, who must hover low to the ground to seek nectar. Their symbolic animals represent their inborn and (forcibly learned through survival) talents; Xianming was forced to learn the talents akin to a god just to survive a severe childhood of sexual trafficking, but now lives happily and hopefully at the side of her beloved, Zhouyu.
On the other hand, Zhouyu envies and despises Xianming in equal measure to loving her, and struggles immensely with accepting her own self-worth, wishing to believe love is as sincerely easy and light and gentle as Xianming says it is, despite feeling unable to. Zhouyu wishes for a miracle that will make loving Xianming easy.