Haha, it's funny that Lightning thought Emerald came on too strong, because... in general Emerald has a reputation for not coming on strong enough to its new team members. OOPS WE OVERCORRECTED? But basically Viridian has been around since the first teams arrived, and Emerald has one of the best teammate retention ratios in Aather, so even though he doesn't necessarily feel like a team has to be a "family" or whatever, he has a very strong view of "teams are necessary for survival in Aather." He's seen other people's team conflict from the outside (Riku ragequitting his own team and coming back on another team later comes to mind), and experienced a lot of it from within Emerald as well (Mytho going Raven way early on in Aather history, etc). With Knife gone, he's lost one of his biggest anchors, and is trying to fill her place as unofficial "leader" of Emerald. At this point it's hard for him to put himself in the place of a new arrival because he's not only been around for so long, being a new arrival in Aather is a lot different now than it was when he arrived.

WHICH IS A LONG-WINDED INTRODUCTION TO HOW HE'S APPROACHING FERRON uh. He does like her in general so far, and thinks she's a good match for Emerald. However, her refusal to accept his overtures re: attempting to make her feel welcome did sting, especially because he doesn't usually put himself out there like that. He also thinks that unless she's willing to be more flexible -- to stop seeing things in a military context, for example -- she's going to have trouble adapting to Aather.