Young Writers Society

now not all alien or fantasy races based on insects act like this, it just seems like a very common trope that i got sick of it. at some point, i refuse to make a bee race on the pretense that they're done to death. i know these are on of the few arthropods that are social but i wanted to avoid the cliche by focusing on other inverbates like butterflies, moths and beetles.

i know realistically, this is impossible as someone once told me simply being able to verbally communicate and tolerate each other was no way a way to make a civilization happen. let alone, a tribe. i was kinda dishearten and wasn't even sure to do this idea.

I don't see a reason why you couldn't do different insects. I guess in building a society, you'd have to answer the following questions:

1) What are their lifestyles like? Obviously a solitary insect would have much different needs than a colony insect like a bee or an ant. I'm guessing their civilization would be much less developed--they might be more akin to hunter-gatherers in loose bands than modern-day countries.
2) Who might they need to be able to communicate with? Like I'd imagine a butterfly might not just communicate with other butterflies, but other pollinating insects and possibly predators. So they might have different languages or there might be some universal insect language.
3) If they're normally solitary, is there something that might cause them to band together? Possible candidates include a predatory threat, natural disaster, or habitat loss from human activity.

I think there's potential in the idea if you're willing to do the research and see what would make sense for these insects.