urgh I'm SO FRIGGIN' TIRED of the idea of some fated sort of soulmate and, like, just from the perspective of there are so many different people and when they get born and where they get born and why only one and why is that romantic and stuff and just literally everything about the idea of a soulmate at least in a story just seems to me to be about romanticism of a delusion
which, like, is why I do actually enjoy the Watchers and the hearth-kin relationship so much (if you have no clue what I'm talking about me and Jeremy wrote the Wayfinder Experience's Winter Game 2014 and there was an alien race in it called the Watchers and they were a psychic race that basically, in terms of how long-lasting, how monogamous, and how central to their lives it was, did platonic relationships the way that we do romantic ones and vice-versa, and their central monogamous life partner was called their hearth-kin, and also served a social role, and, like, most Watchers found one very early on in their lives (first 100 years, lifespan is maybe 800 years, but they're considered adults after 100) and basically one you have a hearth-kin that's your hearth-kin for life)
but the whole deal with Watchers and hearth-kin was (a), as an extremely psychic race, unlike human marriage which has a much higher rate of divorce there isn't really much hearth-kin divorce because you have the whole psychic thing helping you out about seeing how much you click
but also it's that they find each other so young, and then they grow up together, they grow into one another, they get to know each other through what they go through and through sharing it with one another and it's that experience that makes hearth-kin, initial compatibility and then time spent growing into one another, not some bullshit soulmate thing, like, they make their own soulmates
and there totally can be hearth-kin pairs who gain a third--Dragon paging you here--and potentially Watchers who just never find a hearth-kin and don't really need one and also there totally are Watchers who end up getting into some terrible fight and then going complete Didmata with their hearth-kin, there's also the degree to which the hearth-kin are totally a political thing, there's also the fact that everyone on that ship who imprinted too hard on the human memories even as they were recalling who they were, like, that's something that's going to have vastly changed them and they're going to need to work really hard and their hearth-kin is going to need to work really hard to come to terms with that, because that's something that was a traumatic experience that changed both sides so much, and, like
I want to write about the future where Watchers and humans are interacting, young Watchers who think that their hearth-kin is a human or Watchers and humans trying to make relationships work and that getting messy, the cultural clash and cultural misunderstanding and the exchange of social ideals, I just
there's so much cool stuff all I want to do is write crazy Watcher science fiction stories what is my life