Understanding Bugs

No longer are insects, arachnids, isopods, and myriapods multi-legged invertebrates. Nowadays, they take the forms of, essentially, tiny little humans. Their bodies are almost exactly like those of humans, complete with the skin colors and differences in features formerly found among the variance of human civilization (though it’s notable that the majority of bugs in the known world have what humans would consider as white skin, with the second most common variant in this respect having black skin). Gender and sex are distributed not as they are for bugs, but as they are for humans, so any given bug has a 50/50 chance of being male or female, though each former species’ differences between sexes might reflect in gender roles! Additionally, as bugs are no longer actually separate species, all bug-people are sexually compatible with one another and may have children no matter whether their partner be an ant, a bee, a fly, a spider, etc, barring size restrictions. Skin color is independent of bug type, and sees very little emphasis in bug societies.

There are, however, a few notable differences between what humans were and what bug-people now are. The most immediately clear of these is size – whereas humans usually ranged between four and seven feet tall, bug-people are much, much smaller. Most bug people range from one and a half to three inches tall, with the very very shortest of these types of bug people reaching around an inch tall and the very very tallest reaching three and a half inches, though both of these are quite rare. Some bugs, those that had been microscopic before the change (this primarily meaning mites and small parasites), are much smaller, being only millimeters tall and thus able to sit on the shoulders of most bugs. Some rare and somewhat mythical bugs, those that reached the size of former humans’ hands, are giants, at one or two(!) feet tall.

Bugs also have, in addition to their human forms, bug features (that scale to their human form). Usually, there is just one of these, but it is possible to have multiple bug features – and these bug features do correspond to the type of bug that the bug-person in question is. For example, an ant-person might have antenna coming from their head, and/or mandibles to the sides of their mouth, whereas a bee person might have wings and/or a stinger, or a spider person might have 4 extra, spindly bug arms. It’s even possible to have sections of exoskeleton! The one boundary that seems uncrossable for this, however, is that the bug-person’s internal structure appears to need to remain human. If a bug comes from parents of different bug-types, the type of bug they are seems to be random between them, with the other option remaining a potential bug type for their children in turn.

Additionally, bugs almost always live from twenty to thirty years as their maximum lifespan and reach adulthood at around eight years, though there are very rare longer or shorter exceptions – no known termite queens have died of old age, for example.
However, one more thing is notable about bug-people: they are afflicted by instincts and urges inherited from their previous species but inhibited by human forms and sharing the same species. It’s not uncommon behavior for spiders in the known world, for example, to seize and tie up other bugs, only to then have no idea what to actually do with them since they can’t eat them and then release them. This has shaped the way that bug societies have formed, with bugs living a myriad of different lifestyles.
Oh, and also bug people can have a rainbow of hair and eye colors! Don’t, uh, don’t question this one too much.