#he grew up in a beetle-dominated society and never saw his parents and that fucked with his brain a little

[ruthlesslistener]

Beetle competitive courtship tradition… amazing. I’m picturing some social-ball-meets-wrestling-tournament situations over here

THAT'S ACTUALLY EXACTLY HOW I IMAGINED IT...Traditional beetle courtship typically involves ritualized wrestling matches to impress partners, but can be a real headache to deal with when population density increases and there's suddenly a lot more guys out there to impress or fight, so setting up specific places for it to occur would have been a necessity. Of course, there's always the chance of a spat to escalate into a full-on wrestling match during mating season where pheromones are thick and tensions are high, but that's what the big guards are for- to scoop up the combatants and chuck them somewhere to duke it out without breaking anything or anyone. It's also why fancy displays outside of those specific areas or theaters are generally frowned upon in the City of Tears, as they can either be seen as a 'come at me bro' gesture or a means of getting people to fight for you- very much a public health hazard! Though rarer species like butterflies can get away with some behaviors that would be common during courtship, especially if they were also doing performances to begin with- aka, Marissa.

I can kind of see them working like jousting arenas from medieval times, where combatants would go in, announce who they were fighting for, and then wrestle with other combatants to prove their strength. Beetles who aren't interested in competing or have already done their performance and are interested in one of the performers can offer them favors or other flirtations to egg them on, as well as indicate their interest. Likely it would be restricted to bugs who've hit their full-adult moult (which is when actual insects are capable of breeding btw) just in case some things get spicy or bloody, but for the most part it would be more for fun, and the tournament grounds would be open outside of breeding season for more family-friendly events as well, though those would be way more organized on account of the competitors not being composed of horny singles looking for a forever mate. And the competitions don't have to be wrestling or sparring, either, I can see sports being a thing that works as well.

Also, this isn't beetle-specific, but there's similar accommodations for species with lek-breeding systems as well. They aren't common enough in the City of Tears to have their own specific structures for them (and the traditional lekking grounds the moths used were bought up for crystal mining), but I can see migratory wanderers or immigrants staking out designated adult nightclubs or theater venues for them to preform their leks, which would allow for them to all find each other in a beetle-dominant city for pairing up. This works out well for any beetles who own these lekking grounds, as they get a lot more customers from both the lekking species and the curious others who flock to see the performers, but I can also see the purpose of those displays not being super common knowledge among the actual beetle tribe. They might just think that all butterflies and moths and fruit flies are naturally performers, or have a culture centered around it, but not pick up on the actual nuances to the dances and songs. Different mating systems and species means that a lot of the pheromonal cues/indicators of a good mate aren't shared, which is why the City of Tears works out despite having a lot of immigrants. Culture clash just doesn't work the same way in humans as it does with bugs.

It's also why Marissa can flutter her wings and sing pretty all day without violating social taboos, and throw in lekking behaviors from her own species without anyone frowning at her for it; most of her audience don't realize that her performances have a base cause in mate-attraction in her species, and even if they did, the fact that she's so different from them + is a professional performer means that it doesn't fall under that 'trying to incite people to fight for me' thing that beetles do. Only Lurien (who I headcanon to be a jewelmark butterfly) might instinctively pick up on it, but since he's a different species from her and is gay as all hell, it wouldn't really work. He'd just feel really fucking awkward about it, lmao