Honestly there's not much to handle on his end of things. I mean, ultimately it's their business if something comes of it. He'd like to see Mau happy because he knows he's lonely; he'd like to see Edmund reach for happiness, and feels kind of bad because he himself belongs to Ven too completely to manage offering that. (Not that bad, more like..."I'm sorry the fact that I'm constitutionally incapable of this makes your life less fulfilled than it could be, but I'm not sorry I'm incapable of it because it's who I am"...anyway.) He's not...invested in any particular specific outcome? If they get together, fine, if they don't get together, also fine.
What matters to him, and pretty much the sum of interest in the situation, is that they're happy with the choices they've made, and that's where he ends up stepping in to beat people with outside perspective. He thinks they might be good for each other if they decide they're interested in each other, but he's aware he's not really a judge of other people's romances? And he really would never presume to be or want to be, unless he was cheating like crazy and actually prophecying, which he can't do in Aather. (And even then he'd use the smallest intervention possible, because seriously.) I'm really just mentioning this because I recall him nudging the Flamels slightly, Perenelle in particular.) The point is, even if it might seem like he was pushing it a little with Mau, he was pushing him mostly to make a conscious choice, whatever the outcome happened to be. And to choose whatever would make him happier! The same for Edmund, a little less explicitly, with a side of "also don't just assume things about other people's choices because that's a little dumb, bro".
I guess the resonance there is that it arises from the same phenomenon? Josh really wants his favorite people to be happy. He wants them to be free to reach for things that make them happy and believe in their own happiness. I think arguably he wants that more than he wants his own happiness, at least subconsciously. He kind of has a thing about helping people, looking out for them, being active, etc! (Which is tempered by self-determination feelings -- a lot of which have arisen from the experience of being powerless and being powerful, now that I think about it. But he wants to act for the better.) And also, in general, he's got it pretty good and he knows it and he wants other people to have it as good as he does. That kind of thing was threaded in among the keyboys thing and a significantly less personally difficult expression of it is basically driving what he does about the possibility of Mau/Edmund.
no subject
What matters to him, and pretty much the sum of interest in the situation, is that they're happy with the choices they've made, and that's where he ends up stepping in to beat people with outside perspective. He thinks they might be good for each other if they decide they're interested in each other, but he's aware he's not really a judge of other people's romances? And he really would never presume to be or want to be, unless he was cheating like crazy and actually prophecying, which he can't do in Aather. (And even then he'd use the smallest intervention possible, because seriously.) I'm really just mentioning this because I recall him nudging the Flamels slightly, Perenelle in particular.) The point is, even if it might seem like he was pushing it a little with Mau, he was pushing him mostly to make a conscious choice, whatever the outcome happened to be. And to choose whatever would make him happier! The same for Edmund, a little less explicitly, with a side of "also don't just assume things about other people's choices because that's a little dumb, bro".
I guess the resonance there is that it arises from the same phenomenon? Josh really wants his favorite people to be happy. He wants them to be free to reach for things that make them happy and believe in their own happiness. I think arguably he wants that more than he wants his own happiness, at least subconsciously. He kind of has a thing about helping people, looking out for them, being active, etc! (Which is tempered by self-determination feelings -- a lot of which have arisen from the experience of being powerless and being powerful, now that I think about it. But he wants to act for the better.) And also, in general, he's got it pretty good and he knows it and he wants other people to have it as good as he does. That kind of thing was threaded in among the keyboys thing and a significantly less personally difficult expression of it is basically driving what he does about the possibility of Mau/Edmund.
How's Nick handling Camelot?