#ask ron staedtler

[ijafterhours]

"I missed you guys too."

After the initial shock of her return, the team gathers in order for Reagan to take stock of their situation. However, no meeting is without it's hiccups- and Reagan uncovers a slightly unexpected truth from within the Biochem department. But, what she really wants is some alone time with Ron. And alone time she certainly gets.

This episode is some good fun and has some good reunion content! The ending melts my heart every time <3 Enjoy, and please share!

[mighwnt]

reagan ridley + #35 on ur spotify wrapped!!!

[tenpixelsusie]

asking u abt grim reaper ron au. btw

(@softichill)

short answer- au where ron is a grim reaper :3

long answer (obvs, tw for death mentions)-

au where ron is one of many grim reapers, taking souls and people to the afterlife to rest...

i think it'd be kinda like his whole job in canon with the memory erasing, except. he's having to kill people.

his outfit would either be that hat and trenchcoat type thing he wore in ep2 or the classic grim reaper robe :-]

so, ron goes out to take the daily souls, disguised as a human... and at the end of it all, he can go home and sleep.

...

but... it takes a toll on him. a lot of the time... people don't want to go. they don't want to DIE. so they argue, they fight, they cry... you name it.

...but no matter what, he has to be the one to swing the scythe.

it's been like this for a long, long time.

and he doesn't know if he can quit.

[ten-cent-sleuth]

Carter and Barrett in “Smoke & Mirrors” are giving me massive Ridley/Staedtler vibes from Inside Job. Like.

Carter / Reagan:

genius scientist and inventor who’s competent and kickass as heckk

secret government branch working with aliens

parental issues; followed in her father’s footsteps

workaholic who won’t ask for a hug but definitely needs some kinda emotional support,,

fan favourite (or at least has my undying love)

Barrett / Ron:

badass but disillusioned agent who wears a suit, works alone, and talks in low tones

secret government branch also but this one has some deep-seated trust issues

Carter’s/Reagan’s agency’s rival until they start working together and he learns to trust her, if not anybody else

“You’re the one who’s always talking about trust” x “So we’ve both been keeping secrets” vibes

I’m not saying I ship Carter/Barrett the way I ship Reagan/Staedtler (the dynamics do have significant differences after all), but their similarities were striking in the scene after the “Smoke & Mirrors” explosion. Idk what it was about that exchange in particular… I haven’t re-watched Inside Job in months so I might be missing a Reagan/Staedtler moment parallel to that scene, not to mention some other general overlap I could have noted above, but yeah. I had to make this post lol.

(The “Smoke & Mirrors” gif is courtesy of @samantha-carter-is-my-muse, idk why Tumblr’s not linking for that one but credit where credit’s due.)

[aquatic-mycologist]

Can you do a Ron staedtler x reader where they have the same relationship as Reagan and Brett and the reader also works for the Illuminati

First request hype first request hype!!! So sorry for delay, stuff came up in my life 💔 Hope this is okay! Feel free to tell me if this isn't what you had in mind or meant!! Also, this got long, so!! Under Read More!

The last thing Ron expected was to find a SINGLE tolerable person in the Illuminati circle

So when Kluge announced that a new person was gonna be joining the team Ron was. less than excited.

He was very dry and distant for the few first weeks despite your attempts to strike up a conversation, most you'd get out of him would be a sarcastic or backhanded response

Don't get him wrong though! It's not that he automatically dislikes you, it's just that you're, like, UNUSUALLY friendly..? And actually trying to actually TALK to him? Learn more about him?? Invite him to hang out and grab something to drink????

Yeah this had to be some sort of plan to get him to do something for you...right?

But he starts letting his guard down when one day you come to work with an extra coffee for him and...oh wow, that's his usual coffee order. He thought you were just making small talk. Huh

He outright asks you if you need him to do you a favor or something

He doesn't mean it bad!! He's just...Shocked and not used to positive input from others, especially work buddies

And when you reply that you just wanted to do something nice for him and offer him a smile, somewhere deep deep DEEP in his mind he kind of knows he's a bit fucked &lt;3

He starts to open up to you more, slowly but surely. He'll start engaging in your conversations, he'll go out of his way to say hi to you when you walk into work in the morning, he'll begin to actually laugh at your dumb jokes, he starts to initate conversations with you by himself and sometimes even swing by your office when he has nothing better to do

When he swings by your office one day, he starts venting about you guys' coworkers and how they're such big assholes to him all the time, even opening up a bit about how his own work at Illuminati fucks him up a bit

What he didn't expect though was for you to actually listen to what he says, and to offer him a kind smile and some sweet advice

He's stunned to say the least, but he actually offers you a very faint, slight smile in appreciation. He doesn't thank you with words, but you can tell that it means a lot to him

After some time after the two of you start getting along, everyone is surprised that Ron is like. Actually having fun and cracking jokes and laughing with you. It's like for a small moment, for some strange reason, you can give him the comfort he's never had

To be completely honest with himself, Ron didn't know exactly where his feelings about you fell. You were kind of the opposite of him, you loved to goof around and make very stupid puns and jokes, you were a bit awkward but never lost your optimism and go-getter attitude, and...you listened to him. You were there for him, always. And he'd be lying if he said that he didn't catch himself staring at you a bit too long sometimes, that he didn't smile at your god-awful snort when you made a particularly horrible joke and that he didn't stay awake for a few hours more than is appropiate at night thinking about you

That's something he's not ready to share with you yet

But when he gets to work early, and he gets to see you walk through the door and wave at him excitedly as you jog over with a smile

He thinks he might be ready one day

[mech4nist]

hi i made a playlist like a couple days after s2 of inside job came out so if you'd like to take a listen

woot woot

i also have a doc filled with lyrics from the songs on the playlist explaining why they remind me of them (if you want...ask me for the link hehe)

[busterheadspace]

If you hate Ron, I am fine with it. But I am sick of dealing of Antis of him! Leave me alone when I talk or write for him because you’re just killing my motivation to continue to be in the fandom and write for anyone else.

I HATE the guest feature on Ao3 because someone had the audacity to hide behind a fake name and hate for A REQUEST someone asked for. I don’t want to be like TW:RON STAEDTLER BECAUSE I LIKE HIM

[jeremy-hand]

🍾 FEBRUARY PROMO 🍾

HI. I'm Reymond/Jeremy/Morgan!!! I use he/it/neos!!! i'm a lesbian AND I'M GODDAMN PROUD!!!

I'm soon to be 16 years old next Tuesday! 🎉

My main F/Os currently are Brett Hand (Familial), Noelle Holiday (Romantic), and Ron Staedtler (Romantic). My full F/O list is in my pinner, and I'm comfortable sharing any of my F/Os :] (S/I list to come soon) (I also have some musical F/Os!! teehee)

I follow/like/send asks from @tenpixelsusie !!

HAVE FUNNN

[reagron]

"why is staedtler so similar to reagan lmao why would the show do that. it's almost like they're somehow related" ok. let me rebutt that. ur wrong btw. here's why.

if you're talking about looks, then i can see what you mean. similar eyebrows and nose shape, i guess. it makes them look kinda related if u imagine it ? but the show would Not pull any weird incest crap so they probably just have similar facial features by coincidence. it's no big deal. can happen to anyone.

and if you're talking about personality, even though they intially bonded over how similar they are to each other, they have a Lot of key differences !!

essay below cut.

reagan has basically sold her soul to the deep state. her work is everything to her. she's willing to give up love for her job, because that's the kind of person she is. she wants to make a difference, even if it'll cost her everything.

ron wants nothing to do with the shadow world. he wants to get away from it all and live a normal life with the person he loves most.

ron has more of a moral compass than reagan does. he avoids doing ethically questionable things whenever possible. he hates his job as a mind eraser and wants to leave the shadow world.

reagan is less concerned with ethics. she's been in cognito long enough to see some bullshit, and even though she recognizes the things they're getting up to aren't exactly ethical (she literally says the situation in still valley is "radically unethical") she does it anyway. because it's her job. simple as that. a lot of what cognito does can be considered lesser evils for a greater good, but shit like spraying an entire town with mind-erasing chemicals so they can sell more dangerous outdated crap is just another tuesday afternoon for her. she doesn't really mind. heck, she probably doesn't even care. she's probably never given still valley another thought after p1e5.

reagan's a bit of a control freak. she probably gets it from rand, no surprises there. if she wants a job done right, she thinks she has to do it herself. in p2e4, she wants her and ron's trip to rome to go perfectly so she can ask him to be her boyfriend. she overuses the catholicizer because if they take too long, they'll be late for her reservation, and that'll ruin the mood, and he might say no. she interrogates him under the guise of the mouth of truth when she hears him say he doesn't date because she wants to know what her chances are before she pops the question. she wants everything to go according to plan, and when it doesn't, she takes it upon herself to arrange things so they're in her favor again. in rontagion, she doesn't trust that her relationship with ron will last if he leaves the shadow government, so she jumps through hoops and organizes an entire company halloween party just to keep him in the shadow world. basically, she wants things to go her way. a lot. and the only people she fully trusts outside of herself are probably brett and ron (and even then, she prefers to get things done herself), so she tends to deal with everything on her own.

ron doesn't seem to share this problem, probably because he grew up in a non-ridley household. in appleton, when he convinces reagan to run away with him, that's literally exactly what he does. no behind-the-scenes shenanigans to highlight the dangers of the deep state, no elaborate scheme to make her see the appeal of a simple life in an unknown city, nothing. he just talks to her, tells her why he wants this, and asks her to think about it. he leaves the decision completely up to her and does zero meddling. if reagan were in his shoes, she'd probably have prepared at least a 50-slide powerpoint presentation, among other things. she'd be a lot more worried about what decision ron would make, and she'd channel that nervous energy into coming up with something to increase the odds that he'd say yes to her.

and that's just some of their differences.

ron seems more comfortable meeting new people than reagan does.

reagan gets so caught up in her feelings that she sometimes loses sight if the bigger picture. ron (the way i see him at least) is more level-headed.

ron is plagued by guilt over the memories he's erased. reagan's had to disappear (and probably indirectly cause the deaths of) more than a few people, but it's never kept her up at night.

reagan's a little paranoid (courtesy of rand, of course). ron's less on edge than she is.

in summary, i love them very much.

yes, the show highlighted how alike they are in p2e1. yes, their similarities are part of why their fling started in the first place. but they're still two very different people with very different priorities in a world where not one in a thousand timelines saw them happy together. god i hate this show.

[aj-lenoire]

first of all, i totally agree that reagan has huge capacity to do good and she would always find out the robes are up to something—not only because it’s consistent with her character but because that’s how the narrative is structured: you reveal a bad guy to the audience with the implicit assumption the good guys will (eventually) also realise something’s wrong

so in that sense, no, reagan’s sacrifice isn’t for nothing, and even as i was making the original post i thought i maybe wasn’t phrasing it quite right

rather, from reagan’s point of view, with the information she’ll have available, when she eventually finds out the robes are not as magnanimous as they claim, she is going to feel betrayed, because the thing that tipped her over into choosing cognito over staedtler was her promotion and seemingly being ‘let in’ to the robes inner circle—she was being given the power to make the positive changes she has always wanted to make

as for her and staedtler specifically, i took it less as ‘they could never work out’ and more ‘they couldn’t be together and have reagan keep her job at cognito’—it’s why she asks brett what he thinks of being in charge permanently, as before the robes speak to her, she is planning to go with him—because why stay in the job where she is overworked and undervalued?

alpha-beta shows her one timeline where she and ron are teaching by improv to incarcerated criminals and by all indications that timeline has her and staedtler perfectly happy and together—but reagan isn’t at cognito. at first, she’s open to leaving—she lost a finger on her last job, after all—but after speaking to the robes, she wants to stay, which is why she searches ‘a thousand lifetimes’ to find one where she can keep her job and staedtler can be happy

my reference to her sacrifice being ‘for nothing’ was referring to this: she chose to give up staedtler and have him live a happy life with someone else, so she could stay at cognito without hurting him, and do the good she has always sought to do. but when she inevitably finds out about the robes, and learns that she is not, actually, as free as she thinks, and not actually able to change the world for the better, she is going to feel bitter, and she is going to feel like she gave staedtler up for nothing, because the thing she supposedly left him for was just another deep state conspiracy

and then she is going to kick the robes’ asses about it

what makes the saying goodbye to staedtler go from sad to a fucking gutpunch is reagan is choosing cognito so she can have a chance at bettering the world, but as soon as she commits to that choice, the robes reveal they’re playing her and her sacrificing her relationship was pointless

[mandareeboo]

Dude I’m sobbing pls talk about the ending of inside job I need to know wether or not it’s bad I cried hard, for a 30 minutes, while eating a cookie

Listen I was NOT expecting to be so invested in Regan and Ron and I was and I was heartbroken even though I'd figured it was coming.

The thing is. The thing is- even without all the timelines to prove it- Reagan and Ron were clearly not meant to be in the long-term. I don't mean that in a "damaged people aren't meant to be together" kind of way. I mean that in a "their damage repels and attracts them like magnets and it will always hurt when they clang" way.

Ron is passively suicidal when we first meet him. This is not exaggeration- a single blast of a memory gun can wipe an entire life, and Ron tried to chug an entire bin of it. Chances are good that he'd have lost all bodily function, if he survived at all. The season goes to great lengths to show us that, for all his charm and care for Reagan, he's clearly very guilty for the things he's done- to the point he tries to keep Reagan away from it even though she does worse regularly. He constantly blames himself for small shortcomings or mistakes and sabotages any friendships he could make along the way. He goes silent for a solid week to plan an entire new world for them because he's so tired he decides to run.

But Reagan isn't! Reagan is a short woman filled with big rage against the machine and a dwindling patience for bullshit. Reagan doesn't want to run, or to leave Cognito- she HAS to fix it, has to tape that bitch together, has to tear anyone who stands in her way a new hole. It's how she copes with a childhood that was chosen for her.

And in the finale- Ron is basically dead, you know that? His mind is erased, and the script gives him a new name and ambitions and life. The man Reagan loved is fucking dead. Sure, she can see his face, sleeping peacefully for the first time in likely a decade, but it's not him. It'll never be him again.

(There's also the side note to be made here that Ron seems to really want kids- he mentions schools in Appleton, his perfect future has one, etc- and Reagan doesn't seem to want any at all, to the point she agrees to ghost protocol after seeing them mentioned by Rafe, so that would be a massive issue in their dynamic eventually.)

At the end of the day, I still really believe Reagan and Brett are best for each other, friends or romantic. They bring out the best in each other. Reagan's blunt nature helps Brett remember she wants him around and is happy to do family dinners or admit a walking dog onto the team, and Brett's positivity helps ground Reagan's pessimism. Ron and Reagan only brought out the best in each other in private- outside their home it brought out their worst constantly.

[ijafterhours]

A NEW CHAPTER.

This is a deviation of my usual posting schedule, and is something i've been mulling over today. Today is quite important in After Hours' development! Hi there! This 2nd of August, 2023, at around 7pm on the dot, I reached the end of writing Season 2 of Inside Job; After Hours. This marks the end of the plot that I've been developing since late November 2022, after seeing the second part of Season 1 of Inside Job air on Netflix. 

I have miscellaneous plots for After Hours that I may want to bring forward from here, such as a Ron-centric movie falling in between seasons, and a plot focusing on a certain shenanigan Lara’s future son Charlie gets into in his adulthood- but I have no plans to start on any of it any time soon. 

What I want to wax poetic about, however, is how After Hours has been changing and improving my life since I started dedicating my time to it. I’m going into my second year of College (British school system, so for Americans, I'm between Grade 11 and 12, and preparing for University!) And I go to a film school that has no exams, and is purely coursework assessed, and for my final for year one, I decided to develop the canon designs for Lara, Logan and Toby for the start of Season 2. If I had not chosen to work on my story the way I had, when it came time to submit our project briefs in late March, I never would’ve passed Year 1 as I did now. I owe passing one of my college years, and in the grander scheme of things, moving up in the animation industry, to After Hours for simply giving me the source materials I needed to impress my examiners. I’ve yet to receive my official grade, but according to a teacher’s verbal slip-up, I'm excited to say I'm getting a very high mark….

I’ve also used After Hours as a coping mechanism, and this last year has been a blur and a struggle, and I could always turn to After Hours in order to release some tension and fuel my creativity. I had no bounds when it came to AH. 

I even procrastinated writing the finale because of my emotional attachment to it- I started Episode 11 in April, and only now have I finished it. 

Lara, Logan, Toby- and even the rest of the crew have my life experiences gently and lovingly sewed into them, and displayed against a background of tumultuous experiences and events that test the true fabric of family and love. 

I’m incredibly moved whenever someone decides to delve into their world and honour me by accepting this offshoot of a story we all know and love.

It’s really hard for me to let go of this project, because it means closing a chapter on what has been the scariest, most productive, most tumultuous and most memorable year of my life. I’ve made so many new and incredible friends, both online and offline, whom I cherish dearly. I’ve started new chapters in love, and also in self discovery. After Hours has accompanied me through that this academic year. 

After the release of the end of Season 1 this weekend, i’ll be taking some time off in beautiful Italy, and i’ll be back with Season 2 in the new academic year come September. 

Thank you so, so much to everyone who's witnessed the development of my ideas come to life these past few weeks, and it only gets more interesting from here!

And a separate thank you to Lara Higgins. She won’t ever know me, but she’s helped me through more than you’d know. 

Stay tuned! Love ya! Thank you for sticking around!

Laika. (@fiuworks)

[daiseception]

I think Ron would do the daily wordle and take it so seriously

[tenpixelsusie]

was thinking about the weed ralsei meme and somehow i recovered a memory of a dream i had where i was smoking a joint with?? ron staedtler from inside job?? in my old living room from when i was way younger??

and he gave me a piece of weed and asked if i wanted to roll it and i rolled it and it was the saddest thinnest thing i'd ever seen so i just started crying .

i've never done weed. i'm pretty sure it's illegal in my state.

[sin-sidejob]

YOOOO Happy early Birthday ^^ For the ask game, I don't know which question I want to ask so maybe... answer one you really want to answer? <333

Thank you bunches sweetheart!! 💋 I couldn’t decide on a question that stuck out more than the rest so I just picked a random number — hope that’s okay!

13. is there a prompt or idea you haven’t written yet but want to share?

oooh there’s several — I try to jot down ideas and concepts as frequently as I can. I tend to forget easily so I’ve gotten in the habit of writing nearly everything down somewhere. I’ve got a tab in my notes app chock full of ideas and concepts I would like to write or at least explore. Hell, a lot of my writing from here is usually drafted or worked on initially in my notes and is either fully written in my tumblr drafts or a google doc then posted. Im usually too excited to do a full proofread and just fix it afterward before too many people notice (if I can help it)

here’s a few prompts and ideas I’ve got saved, one sad, one smutty, and an extra:

Sad: Alpha Beta breaking his programming to cry when you die or have a near death experience, holding your body in his arms and searching for a pulse even though it’s gone or his sensors can’t find it — for bittersweetness let’s just say the pulse is there and his sensors got broken in melee or something

Smutty: (this got inspired by a single line of dialogue from part 2, you’ll know it) — Glenn getting a blowjob for the first time since post op + struggling to fit it into your mouth, your gag reflex, watery eyes and drool/spit. Having to pump the rest of it with your fist and tugging at his balls or sucking on them between breaks of having to choke on his giant cock

Extra: Ron Staedtler imagine or headcanons with the one coworker he likes

[k1ckback]

I apologize if I haven’t gotten to your requests yet!! I’m going through a bit of a slump though will hopefully have some up tonight!