if we’re sharing maxwell opinions, my possibly controversial one is that “maybe i saw you as a friend, but the colonel and daniel were family” says a lot about hera, but next to nothing about maxwell. like. it’s an imagined line said by a dead woman, from the perspective of someone who is coming to terms with the fact she may never have actually known her at all.

the conversations in boléro are all about the stories we tell ourselves in order to grieve, to find some answers to the questions left behind by people who... “how could you just... just do that, and then be gone?” ... but. they’re just stories. and any one of those stories seeks to... emotionally simplify things, because it’s a complicated situation, and hera wishes she could decide how she feels about maxwell now. if she hates her or not. if she can empathize with or understand her at all. because if maxwell saw her as a friend, it’s so much harder, and so much worse, for hera to imagine a situation in which that is true and maxwell could still have done what she did to her, of her own free will. and in that context, i think that particular line is an interesting story for hera to consider telling herself.

or, to put it another way: hera saw maxwell as a friend. she put her trust in maxwell, something that’s very difficult for her to do, and put herself at risk to defend her. but if it actually came down to it. life or death. ... do you really think she would’ve chosen maxwell over eiffel and minkowski? because i really, really don’t.