#thank u for ur kind words!!!! i'm glad other ppl like jigsquad so much bcus they won't leave my mind

[tibby]

if u want to could u write abt ur thoughts on amanda and hoffman’s relationship in the jigsquad verse 👉👈 i love this au sooo much thank u for providing the best content

hoffman and amanda's relationship is...complicated. i often wonder what it could have been like in canon if john hadn't fostered such a toxic environment and pitted them against each other. they do have things in common and i think they also had a capacity to work well together - bathroom trap, nerve gas house, and the night of lynn/jeff/eric/rigg's tests all happened AFTER john took them both under his wing. ik hoffman sets amanda up to die the night of the latter but the fact remains they had MULTIPLE games set up in the same building and i doubt john would have been able to do much. hell, even when they're fighting while fixing up the rack, there's still like...a weird sense of them being in sync. amanda's brains and hoffman's brawn and when they're not at each other's throats they make a hell of a team.

so. taking that into consideration and placing them in the jigsquad verse, where they are able to form a relationship despite john's interference...they're very much like a brother and sister. they're always about 0.5 seconds away from killing each other and they'd both rather die than admit than they care for one another, but they do. jigsquad mark is able to retain his humanity and because of this, he sort of grows to see amanda as...a surrogate little sister to make up for the sister he lost. and amanda will never be angelina, both as a person and as a piece of mark's life, but it's something. and for amanda...i think generally speaking she distrusts men due to past experiences and it takes her the longest to warm up to mark because a) he is an asshole to her b) he was her ~rival~ for john's attention c) he's a cop. BUT. once they've gotten to a point where she realises he cares about her and won't actually hurt her...it's nice to have that weird big brother presence in her life.

john's death plays out very differently in jigsquad and since mandy lives through that night and he doesn't, the ramifications are also very different. the games continue in part because john implies that if the apprentices don't carry on his ~legacy~ then there's contingency plans in place for them, but also because amanda sort of. needs to process her shit with john and what he did to her in her own way, and that does mean continuing his work. which. isn't the healthiest coping mechanism but the guys realise she's going to do it with or without them and at least if they're with her, she'll be safer. and mark is a lot more willing to let her take control of everything and has no desire to kill her for power or whatever.

but yeah. they still fight all the goddamn time but they're not trying to like, Actually Hurt each other and aren't praying for one another's downfall. they're just. an older brother and a younger sister who aren't related and also know each other because they murder together.

here are some headcanons i have:

as the two resident former addicts of the group they keep an eye on each other because they know the signs (even if they do claim it's because they can't have the other relapsing and fucking up their whole operation)

amanda is a vegetarian and hoffman, the designated chef of the group, cooks vegetarian meals for her. sometimes he'll make a whole separate dish just so that she has something to eat.

she steals something for him (idk what hoffman would like for gifts. knives? keychains? pasta?) on the anniversary of his sister's death because she knows how sad he gets about it but also doesn't know how to deal with it. and she's like. ugh. here. *shoves it in his hands and then watches movies with him all day while neither of them acknowledge why she did it*

unsurprisingly a lot of people at the station don't really get hoffman's choice in friends and are kind of assholes about it. once a narcotics detective once referred to amanda as "a drugged up psycho" to hoffman's face and he punched the cop in the nose for it. this was separate to the punching strahm incident and was outside of work so nobody knew about it. which like....anonymous brutality is sort of the way mark cares.

sometimes he carries her (and adam) around on his broad ass shoulders. sometimes she sits on his back while he does push ups.

he steals her cigarettes and she'd get mad about it but she keeps stealing his zippo lighters. so they're even.

this will probably make more sense when i finish (and for that matter, start) my The Night of III/IV According to Jigsquad Verse fic in five million years but. in the aftermath when john is dead and they're all reeling from that and amanda is recovering from being shot in the neck and hoffman can't really check in on them because that'll be suspicious...he does what he can by telling strahm (and perez) to back the fuck off and leave amanda alone. she's nothing more than a person of interest and they have no proof she worked for john but hoffman knows they suspect her. and he also knows the last thing amanda needs right now while she's badly injured and processing john's death is to be harassed by the fbi. so. yeah. he makes sure to keep them away for her for as long as she possibly can.

similarly. hoffman asking john why amanda has to be in the nerve gas house has less to do with him not understanding the rules or whatever. and more to do with him wondering why the fuck john is okay with putting amanda in a dangerous situation, even if she's ~fine~ with it. he's very out of touch with his feelings and doesn't even realise he's doing it out of concern but. he is!

this one also features adam but on nights when there's no trap business to attend to and lawrence is working his real person job and the three of them are "banned" from "testing traps in the living room" and "treating them like toys" because they "keep getting blood on the carpet" they all just sort of. bake edibles together and paint each other's nails (hoffman always says that if he's being forced to do this then he wants black manly nails but amanda always ignores this and paints them something sparkly that diana left behind the last time lawrence had a custody weekend) and revel in each other's weirdness and smoke cigarettes. they play mario games together (hoffman always goes donkey kong, amanda bowser or dry bones, adam princess peach) and amanda and hoffman WILL climb all over each other and accuse one another of cheating and it will get borderline violent but it's fine. they love each other. they're having fun.