Chicken Won: How Miraculous Ladybug Treats Marc And The Rooster Miraculous
Hi everyone! For context, I'm the authoress of Two Bees in a Pod, a Miraculous Ladybug AU fanfiction. I'm also a member of the Marinette Critique Studio, and recently I made a post analyzing how Ladybug's ladybug motif is some very good accidental symbolism of Marinette's toxicity in her relationships with others, particularly in how she treats other girls, Chloe, and Adrien, by comparing her to a solitary, poisonous, carnivorous, and cannibalistic beetle that evolved to shove past ants to steal their aphids, with some notes on Chloe's honeybee motif reflecting Chloe's aggressive and frankly territorial personality.
In the comments, one lovely poster made a good analysis of how Adrien/Chat Noir has a black cat motif to represent bad luck, but how this is actually quite symbolic of Adrien being a sweet, playful boy who loves people but will break out the claws if pushed too far. That got me thinking about how the writers of Miraculous Ladybug might not understand the ecologies of the animals they designed their heroes after, and if the ecologies of said animals might be unintended symbolism of their personalities. This post is all about the Rooster Miraculous, a major contender for both the least popular Miraculous and the Miraculous in most need of a rework.
Let's start with the bird itself. The Rooster Miraculous is clearly based on the domestic chicken, Gallus gallus domesticus, a subspecies of red junglefowl first domesticated in Southeast Asia as early as eight thousand years ago either around or in what is today Thailand. Red junglefowl are ground-dwelling omnivores that live in bamboo forests and are well-adapted to take advantage of the unpredictable mass flowering that bamboo exhibits: when there's suddenly a lot of seeds to eat, there's going to be a lot more eggs laid. Humans domesticated chickens so hens would lay eggs (especially unfertilized ones) whenever they ate enough independently of bamboo blooming season, but they weren't using the first chickens for food. No, the first chickens were bred for cockfighting, where two roosters are put into the same pen and allowed to fight to the death. Their use as poultry is a more recent innovation.
Two roosters duking it out by Amshudhagar - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17848836.
Chickens are gregarious birds that live in flocks with strict social hierarchies. Females, also called hens, enforce their hierarchies via pecking, hence the phrase "pecking order". Males, also called roosters or cocks, prefer to fight each other with their claws, and they fight a LOT; the flocks their wild ancestors & cousins live in have only one dominant male, and they do NOT tolerate interlopers. Wild junglefowl can fly in short bursts so they can escape into trees to escape terrestrial predators, while domestic chickens are too heavy to fly very far if at all.
Because of how easy they are to raise to maturity, keep in a small amount of space, and transport over long distances, chickens are by far the most widespread bird on Earth, with over 23.7 billion individuals living at any given time and over 50 billion being raised every year as of 2018. Naturally, given their ubiquity they've made it into several aspects of human culture. A large part of many humans' diets contains chicken eggs and/or flesh, their feathers see widespread use in fashion, and their behaviors have great cultural significance too.
Roosters infamously crow as soon as the Sun rises, a territorial display roughly translating to "This land is mine! You can't have it OR my girls! Fuck you!", getting the timing right thanks to their precise circadian rhythms. As a result, roosters are commonly associated with the Sun, and warm weather & fire by extension, across the world; roosters can be found around Shinto shrines to display the shrine's devotion to sun goddess Amaterasu, cockfighting is traditionally part of the Qingming Festival celebrated in China & neighboring nations to commemorate the spring season, and in ancient Greece roosters were sacred to the sun god Helios in reference to a myth where Ares' guard Alectryon fell asleep, allowing Helios to catch Ares shagging Aphrodite and tell Hephaestus that his wife was cheating on him again; Alectyron was punished by being turned into the first rooster so he'd never fall asleep when the Sun rose again.
The Latin word for chickens, gallus (the source of their genus & species names), is coincidentally similar to the Roman word for the Celtic people of modern-day France whom they saw as powerful: the Gauls – or, in Latin, the Gallus. The resulting pun was used to mock the Gauls, but after the Roman Empire fell French kings turned the rooster into a positive symbol of their courage and bravery, reflecting how a rooster will try to fight & kill anything that pisses it off, including some of their own predators like hawks. The Gallic Rooster's popularity surged during the French Revolution, and now the Gallic Rooster, often called "Chanticleer" after a proud rooster that Reynard the fox unsuccessfully tried to eat who later inspired a really weird movie called Rock-a-Doodle that I only ever saw once, is a mascot for French sports teams to advertise their tenacity.
I do remember it being really weird. Image by IMDb, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8140332.
Speaking of weird writing, it's time we talked about the Rooster Miraculous, which houses Orikko, Kwami of Pretension. Pretension is the perfect concept for a chicken-based Kwami; roosters are often stereotyped as arrogant, and arrogance is often associated with pretentious behavior. It being a thumb ring is also apt, as it brings to mind the metal spurs some people attach to roosters before starting a cockfight. But that's as good as the Rooster's writing gets; first of all, it's clearly "Rooster" because that's what it is in the Chinese Zodiac, but Kwamis have no biological sex or psychological gender so the gender-neutral "Chicken" would be more appropriate. Second of all...it's just an absolute mess.
The Rooster's power is Sublimation, which lets the user do anything they want as long as it's not a power another Kwami has. And by anything, I fucking mean "anything". Like traveling to alternate realities.
Or flight.
Or making perfect soccer kicks.
Or bootlegging.
This runs into several problems. One, it's fucking broken and why they don't just spam it all the time is beyond me. Two, it ends up limiting what powers a Kwami can grant, which limits what kinds of Kwamis you can have because surely there's a Kwami that grants you temporary flight (my money's on a flying squirrel). And three, it does NOT fit the concept of pretension whatsoever; Merriam-Webster defines pretension as "1: an allegation of doubtful value; pretext. 2: a claim or an effort to establish a claim. 3: a claim or right to attention or honor because of merit. 4: an aspiration or intention that may or may not reach fulfillment (has serious literary pretensions. 5: vanity, pretentiousness." Sublimation should reflect that, but it doesn't; instead, it does what the power granted by the Kwami of imagination would do. So why doesn't it reflect pretension? The answer has to do with the Miraculous' wielder.
As of Season 6, Marc Anciel has the least development out of all the Miraculers. We don't know much about his upbringing beyond his parents being LGBT allies and himself being LGBT. He only gets two major appearances in the entire First Saga: Reverser, where he's akumatized, and Penalteam, where he gets the Rooster Miraculous. What we DO know of Marc is that he's a very kindhearted boy who's a bit shy & definitely averse to conflict, yet very good at making friends owing to his kind and generous nature. When Marc substitutes for Nathaniel in a soccer game and runs afoul of Chloe's latest tantrum over being forced to do physical activity for a grade, Ladybug immediately singles him out to be Orikko's new wielder in a move that just screams "I hooked you up with your boyfriend, so you owe me a favor." Lo and behold, Rooster Bold/Cock (sorry, Coq) Courage saves the day by weaponizing the power of Chloe's short attention span to make her too bored to fight.
Like the other boys in the Penalteam Quartet, Marc receiving his Miraculous doesn't feel earned like it did for past heroes (Rena, Carapace, Pegase, Ryuko, Viperion, King Monkey, Pigella, Purple Tigress), and instead feels like the writers were rushing to get this episode done and canonize the wielders of those four Miraculous after their stunt with Vesperia. Sabrina's feels earned since she's got the most focus & an arc of standing up to Chloe in this episode, but Marc & Nathaniel have a small subplot and that's it, and Ivan has even less than that. There's nothing personal at stake for Marc in Penalteam. Penalteam is a Sabrina Episode, not a Marc Episode. An episode where Marc gets a Miraculous should focus on his feelings that he can't do what he wants to do because it would make someone else upset, because from what little we have of Marc's character that's the kind of person he is and the thing that he needs the most help with. That's why I plan to give him a different Miraculous that fits his character a lot better, but I'll go full boar in Season 4 (hey, that rhymed).
Marc's lack of development is reflected in the Rooster's entire nature. It doesn't feel like its own Miraculous; it feels like it was meant to be Marc's Miraculous first and foremost, hence why its weapon is a pen and its power starts with something being written & lets the user do anything akin to a writer having unlimited creative freedom. It's got the same problems as the Goat (which, fun fact, I once thought was going to be Marc's Miraculous were he to ever get one): it was envisioned entirely as a specific person's Miraculous as reflected by its powers and weapon, resulting in it being an unbalanced story-breaker power that doesn't compliment the base concept. The Rooster should be one of the most often-used Miraculous yet Rooster Bold has only appeared once in the sixth season thus far, meaning the writers have either written themselves into a corner with Sublimation's versatility or have no plans to give Marc any more characterization beyond "nice femboy writer that Nathaniel is dating", and that's a disservice to both the boy & the Miraculous.
So, who SHOULD the Rooster, or Chicken as I call it, go to if it's supposed to reflect the concept of pretension? Why, someone whose pretensions are in need of plucking, of course. And there's only one guy who really fits the bill (er, beak).
Kim's base archetype is the proud, swaggering, athletic meathead who doesn't think before he acts and is very, very arrogant. The above image is taken from Animan, where his pretensions about his physique nearly get him eaten by a man who's been turned into a shapeshifting leopard. In fact, Kim thinking that he can say whatever he wants without consequence is what caused the very first akumatization in the series. He is, at his core, a highly pretentious person who needs to learn when to drop his pretensions and take things seriously. If there's someone who needs to learn to rein it in, it's him, so for Two Bees in a Pod that's the direction I took.
The Chicken works for Kim on another level. Being compared to a chicken is usually not a compliment, as chickens are stereotyped as dimwitted cowards in Western media. Kim really doesn't want to be seen as a chicken, i.e. a coward, which is why he takes so many dares, but the show loves to remind us that he's not very smart. In reality, chickens are among the smarter birds, being able to count, add & subtract, and anticipate the future, vital adaptations for life in a bamboo forest where the availability of food is erratic. In fact, chickens are so smart that they can manipulate each other, and there are indications that they can empathize with other birds who are hurt.
They can also play the piano.
In short, the idea that chickens are stupid is based on false pretensions, and I think this also applies to Kim at some level. While he's definitely gullible, impulsive, and lacking in tact Kim is capable of great empathy, as seen in Party Crasher when he caught Master Fu when he was going to fall, which inspired him to give Kim the Monkey Miraculous as he saw Kim's true heroic nature underneath the bluster. This is the direction I took him in for Two Bees in a Pod: he's empathetic and good-natured but doesn't think things through (and compared to his canon counterpart considerably less malicious). Stoneheart happened not out of a premeditated taunt, but rather Kim saying the wrong thing at the wrong time and making Ivan feel insecure while Kim thought he was being helpful. In Verity Queen, Kim snapped at Nurse Sissy while trying to defend Zoe's honor after Zoe mistook Sissy's blunt reminder to mind her weight as a deliberate insult, and Sissy wound up akumatized because of it. Kim donned Orikko to correct his mistake, and after everything was cleared up and Zoe apologized for falling victim to her own pretensions, Orikko chose Kim to be his permanent champion because he recognized that while Kim has good intentions his methods need work, and Orikko is willing to teach him humility so his methods may improve.
And so, here he is: Gosaigon.
(Picture of Kim to go here when I get around to drawing him.)
The name of Kim's Chicken transformation is a play on the Ga Sai Gon, a breed of fighting chicken from Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City, and the phrase "Go, Saigon!" which you might hear at a sporting event; as Kim is not only an athlete & the kind of person who would shout a phrase like that during a sporting event, but canonically from the Saigon Ward of Ho Chi Minh City in Two Bees in a Pod, it's only natural for him to honor his birthplace & his interests with his hero name.
Knowing when and when not to trust your pretensions is something that Kim needs to learn; therefore, Orikko should be someone who doesn't tolerate pretentiousness at all – in other words, a drill sergeant. There's a hierarchy, a ranking system, a pecking order to life, and Orikko knows it and will make sure that you do too. He's disciplined, stern, and completely serious, and he doesn't care about your pretensions and will call your bluff in a heartbeat. But despite his gruff demeanor and loud voice, Orikko is a benevolent, wise teacher who wants the best for his chicks, and he's capable of dropping his own pretensions to show gentle kindness when the moment calls for it. In a similar vein the Miraculous' weapon was replaced with a bow & arrow, whose complexity forces you to drop your pretensions and be careful with it so you get your target and don't hurt yourself (not that the arrows do much lasting damage).
Sublimation was heavily revamped to better fit the concept of pretension as well. Pretensions are based on overestimating your abilities beyond your actual capability, so I decided that Sublimation should grant the ability to turn bragging into reality, to make your boasting no longer empty. Sublimation lets you boost one of your natural abilities to supernatural levels, but only if that's an ability you actually have; it can't make you fly, but it can let you jump hella high (Wonderella reference), along with granting accelerated healing, frostbite resistance, superhuman speed & strength, and enhanced intelligence for as long as you're transformed. To use the Chicken properly, you must understand your own capabilities and accept that you can only work with what you've already got; you can make chicken nuggets in any shape, but they'll never be hamburger.
In short, Kim is the best fit for the Rooster Miraculous based on its base concept of pretension, but the Miraculous itself, and especially the power it grants, needs an extensive rework to fit the concept it's supposedly based on & be better-balanced compared to the other Miraculous. The way it's written now leaves it nebulous and poorly-thought-out, which reflects how it was given in a poorly-thought-out way to a boy who is for all intents and purposes a satellite character unlikely to receive a fair chance to show his full depth. Ironically, this likely does reflect pretension after all – the writers' pretensions that these were good writing decisions that shouldn't be questioned whatsoever. And if you do question them? They'll drag you into a cockfight in the Twitter comments.
A visual metaphor for what happens to people who dare to question the whims of overly pretentious writers.
