#Special Ops: Lioness spoilers

[caliphoria17]

“Come here.”

Aaliyah x Cruz

[cloudsonclouds]

OH NO! She got her charm from her father!

[triyal]

bold of cruz to assume aaliyah will live long enough to have kids tbh

they were gonna kill this girl for refusing an arranged marriage, how do you think they'll react to her getting fooled into letting a CIA assassin infiltrate her wedding???

Special Ops: Lioness - 1x08

[comic-book-jawns]

Cruz & Aaliyah || “Wish the Fight Away”

Special Ops: Lioness 1.07

[aliliebert]

[hoooebot]

they are hiding Cruz from all these season 2 stills and even the trailer, her season 2 arc must be big. but still, I spot her in these 2 scenes.

looks like joe's shady ass is about to gaslight her back to the mission in Mexico since all the other gringos in the QRF can not .

good to know she still hates joe (as she should! yas queen, pull your gun out with your strong arms and point at joe

[overkill-max]

Special Ops: Lioness Season 2 - Josie

Spoilers after the cut if you haven’t seen Episode 3

I am still disappointed we haven’t seen Cruz yet, but I do understand why. We need to see things from the new Lioness’ perspective. And what a contrast. I love that the show always gives us contrasting characters that mirror each other. Now we see how different Cruz’s introduction was to Josie. Cruz thought that “if you ain’t cheatin’ you ain’t tryin’.” She wanted to prove to Joe so badly that she was what Joe was looking for that from the start Joe wanted to break her because she thought it wasn’t enough. Then, in the middle of the mission, because of how Joe treated her, she had doubts and told Joe she “wasn’t cut out for this.”

Then we have Josie, who from the start told Joe she didn’t want to be a Lioness. That she heard about it and no one ever came back. She knows if she says she loves her country she is signing her own death warrant. She wants to keep flying and serving her country, she doesn’t want to die for it in the way that Joe wants. So she lies and says she doesn’t know Spanish, she doesn’t know why her family has nice things. The family she never talks to, the family she isn’t close to.

And Joe keeps pushing until she gets a yes. That Josie will sign up for a program she doesn’t believe in, for a mission to destroy her family. For someone that follows the rules because he family always saw themselves above it, I can see why she would hate to do anything that colors outside the lines.

This is a problem for Joe, because she doesn’t care, she has a mission and everyone is expendable.

I love that Josie thinks that everyone is just as big of an asshole as Joe. And we see how before they liked Cruz and got along with her, she was a Marine and they went on a mission with her. They bonded. Things were probably different with Isabel (the first lioness we saw get killed). Then we see Josie who gets the cold shoulder and is thrown from captain to having to dress in a pantry because she wants privacy, something she was given due to her rank versus basic, something she alludes to.

The slow stripping of who she was, so that Joe can get her lioness is brilliant as it is cruel. Because at the end of the day, Joe tells Josie that she doesn’t care about others, she will kill a teenager if that gets her what she wants. She will even get Josie into trouble with the country she has been protecting for years to get what she wants. So either you’re a mole for your family or you’re a mole for us. Decide if you want to live a little longer in jail or with the illusion of freedom.

And I miss Cruz, but I do like seeing how different things are for Josie. How can you manipulate someone who has a family into dying for your mission? How do you manipulate someone that lied to protect herself, her family, into destroying that same family? You break them, little by little, you torture them by taking away the comradery the military offered them, the rank, and the one thing they’re good at, and then, when she realizes she’s out of her depth, like she said she would be, you continue to take more, until there’s nothing left. That’s when you really recruit her.

You break her again and again until she gives you what you need.

I miss Cruz but I’m also glad she’s not here, because Joe is even more brutal than ever. I can’t wait for next week’s episode.

[alienpussycat]

IF YOU DON’T LET ME SUCK YOUR DICK, IM GONNA KILL MYSELF!! TAKE YOUR PANTS OFF RIGHT NOW!!!

[caliphoria17]

HOLY MOTHER OF—

[sapphic-bombshell-vixen]

take me to aaliyah or take me to the fucking airport.

[booasaur]

Special Ops: Lioness - 1x07

[alphacentaurinebula]

Small break from regularly scheduled good omens content because I finally watched the end of Lioness and like…come on. I knew it was a crap show the whole time I was watching it, but like…fucking hell.

In aid of anyone who like…doesn’t want to write bad stories, here are many of the things lioness did wrong. Please look away if you liked this show I’m not here to spoil anyone’s fun. Full spoilers below the cut.

- almost every single plot strand outside the main secret agent infiltration narrative was totally random and completely external, rather than grown from character or existing story. Not enough CIA shooting in this ep? Oh, your team has been borrowed for an illegal mission on US soil. Natural family angst not at a high enough level? Ah, daughter’s in a deadly car accident with people we’ve never seen or heard of and won’t again. Oh, and she’s randomly pregnant at 14! Cool cool cool. But it’s ok cuz god gives her an abortion

- the plot REGULARLY made no sense and the characters couldn't employ logic if it slapped them in the face. Like, someone explain to me why AFTER you have already run an insertion op to start the embedding process for your asset - thus meaning that the mark could contact her at ANY POINT - you decide THAT is the moment when you should fake abduct her, beat her up enormously, including on her face. Like, if it had been a ploy to get Aaliyah's sympathy that would have been one thing, but they 100% hadn't thought it through at all. These are supposed to be crack agents???

- they had a central moral quandary but they didn’t understand what it was or what they were trying to say. Was it about how money is all that counts and rich people are gonna rich no matter who you kill (eg all the weird dialogue with Nicole Kidman's husband)? Was it that fighting terrorism with terrorism is ineffective and pointless and cruel (literally one single conversation between Joe and Cruz at the end)? Is it that trying to have it all as a woman is not possible when you’re a super secret agent (I think this one was unintentional consequence of super clichéd writing tbh)? Was it that any problem can be solved with enough shooty fighty (prob the most evidence for this one)? The show certainly doesn't know, so how could I?

- the show was BAD at writing queer women. Like, ok, it was hot, and aaliyah and cruz had interesting potential. But there were these moments that rang SO false. Like...after Cruz runs from the hotel room after sleeping with Aaliyah, Joe heads off to meet her. She grabs Bobby and says, let's go. I literally was like, oh, finally, Bobby will talk some lesbian sense into Cruz. But Bobby was just like...there to drive the main character to the hotel?? You have a canonically queer woman and another going through extreme queer angst and you just...don't put them in the same room?

- the politics. Like, Ok. I know it's paramount plus. I know it's the same guy who did Yellowstone. I know it's US propaganda, and copaganda, and like every ganda that's known to humankind. I know it's not overtly antiabortion but also kind of is, I know it has a THING about the way it writes woman (like..did Joe really seem the type to have kids to anyone?? Are women EVER allowed to be strong and badass without a rape backstory AND an abuse backstory?). It's all terrible. But fine, whatever I sort of signed up for it. I knew from the first five minutes that this was going to be America Rah Rah Shootytime, and tbh I knew from the posters. But the thing that really pissed me off in the end? The like absolutely random and unnecessary barbs at climate change. There were just a few moments but it basically made out like the politicians wanted to keep this 'terrorist' alive because he was artificially inflating the price of oil and they're trying to 'wean the country off fossil fuels'. Like, REALLY? We don't have enough conspiracy theories? Fucksake.

And finally - the ending. After all the moral questioning about whether she can kill Aaliyah's father or not, Cruz's hand is forced and she ends up having to kill or be killed, which is an utter cop out. She also does not go back for Aaliyah. I'm sorry. That is some bullshit. I just don't buy it. I mean the whole plan was super dumb - literally, it really made zero sense - but was Cruz really happy to put Aaliyah in jeopardy that way? She is the one who brought this killer into the house - does Cruz really think she is safe? And given everything Aaliyah was saying about how little she wanted that life, wouldn't Cruz have offered her the chance to run with her? I dunno. Obviously not all lesbian stories have to be happy. But that one was just DUMB.

Ok, thus ends my rant on the narrative shortcomings of a terrible show that I watched because...lesbians. Anyway. I hope you either enjoyed the show, or enjoyed the rant!

[overkill-max]

Special Ops: Lioness Season 2 - Joe

Spoilers after the cut if you haven't seen it.

I have so many thoughts on the new Special Ops: Lioness season, and most of them revolve around how hilarious it is that Joe constantly tells people she doesn't want her assets picked for her, and then she just lets men pick them for her.

They pretend it's a suggestion, but really, there's just something to be said about a woman constantly seeking absolution from her first loss by pretending that because she wasn't the one that picked them after that, it couldn't possibly be her fault when they fail her again.

Joe feeling Isabel's loss and refusing to be better from it is just *chef's kiss* I love that the first season shows us how she had the perfect marine and turns her into something that goes so against the core of who she is, that even if the mission was successful, it's still a failure.

Now, she has another exceptional soldier and the first thing she does is push and push, wanting to break her. Then, when Josie is right on that edge, Joe does what she does best, she humiliates her further by forcing her to strip. It serves no purpose, her uncle knows who she is. Her cover is that it will be a public dismissal. So they know she's a pilot as well. So it serves no purpose to do this for the mission, but it does serve a purpose to Joe and that's what matters.

Joe will always think about the lionesses that came before this one. And instead of being better, she chooses to break Josie that first day, no SERE, just her wielding her power around and throwing insinuations around so Josie breaks. Then she brings back the first lioness and tells her to strip.

I love the parallels and how Joe will always sabotage herself and the mission before it even starts because she wants control so badly that it warps her.

What is everyone's thoughts on the first two episodes of season 2?

[whatimdoing-here]

Excuse me wait that's the end of the episode?!?!?

[caliphoria17]

“I just want to feel loved one last time.”

Aaliyah x Cruz