Waiting for the twist that's never going to come.

Today I've shed some tears, but I don't think I've been going through the same sort of grief that some others have. For a while I didn't know why, and I felt like I just had nothing to say. I still kind of do; I made a big long post on facebook about it to a sea of friends who either don't know about or don't care about some internet celebrity, but I don't know if I have anything of real substance to add here.

But more importantly, I just haven't been feeling that violent, visceral grief and sadness that it feels like I should. I could chalk that up to not really knowing Ryan, or having never met him, but then who on this site has? And yet look at this out pour! This insane, touching awesomeness. How many had never even met him, and yet are still so touched by all of this. I think my issue is that I don't believe it. Intellectually, I know that it's true; that it's not some terrible, cruel joke, and that Giant Bomb would never pull something like that. But that's not what I mean by not believe it. I mean that I feel like there's a plot twist coming. I mean, come on, really? A main character dying? Out of nowhere? Right after their wedding? Off screen? That's silly. There's got to be some turn around later. This is just us being in the dark middle section, right? He's going to show up, smiling widely, and then slay the god damned dragon (or maybe just John Drake. Ah! You see what I did there? Jokes!), right?

But no. That's not going to happen. And I don't know when I'm going to realize that. I don't know if I want to. I desperately want this to turn into a story; the sort where this sort of thing has narrative important. But it doesn't. It won't. I want to be inspired to change myself from this, but will I? Should I? For the first time since I can remember, I have been assuming, hoping, begging that there is some sort of after life. That Ryan is now shooting the shit on some fluffy cloud. Or in Hell. I could live with that. I want you to imagine Ryan in Hell, trying to run a stream where he's interviewing Beelzebub and Judas and generally lighting the place up. Try to think about that and not smile. I think Hell with Ryan Davis would be fairly tolerable.

I don't know what to do about all of that though. Chances are that, at some point when I'm least expecting, it's going to come crashing down on me, and I'll finally be able to join the rest of the mourners with my tears. In the mean time, I'll be waiting. I'll be waiting for the tables to turn, the script to flip, and for either the heart warming happy ending, or the sobering but significant and lesson filled bitter sweet ending. I'll let you guys know if I ever find it.

I feel the exact same way. I spent the better part of the day going through old Game Room Quick Looks and didn't get choked up about it at all. I'm not sure when it'll hit me, but it will. I'm sure whenever Jeff talks about it my heart will shatter.

My first reaction to seeing a post while skimming my Twitter feed is that this is a joke. I quickly grabbed my laptop to confirm my suspicion, but that never came. All I found were dead serious and sad postings from his friends and fans. Ryan will be missed.

There's no lesson here. There's nothing to learn, nothing to teach, no satisfying wrapping it up. That's life. He's just gone. He won't be there to greet us on Monday, or open up the Bombcast, or TNT, or Unprofessional Friday. He won't be around to sit in for 10 minutes and then walk out on Jeff in the middle of a Quick Look. He won't be there to tell us about whatever the next thing is that's hot fucking bullshit. None of that will ever happen again. Personally for me, knowing that all those things that were so integral to my weekly experience and daily life are never going to happen again, just makes me miss them so fucking bad. I just hear "hey everybody" over and over again in my head, because even though I can go back and listen to the old videos, I'm never going to really hear it again.

In the back my head, there's this thought that maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and this will all be gone. Everything will be back to normal. Maybe.

I think everyone's gone through what you described here. Its like hardwired into our brains that such a thing is not possible without a plot twist. But it would be best for yourself if you accepted the truth.

There's a part of me that's expecting there to be a bombcast tomorrow and Ryan's going to introduce it as always and then make some dismissive joke about all the stuff today and it would be fucking hilarious. Though i wouldn't put it passed him to plan out some giant, Andy Kaufman-esque death joke, that's not going to happen. I think the most important metric to measure success is the affect one has on other people. Ryan is the most successful bastard in the industry. The overwhelmingly positive out poor of emotion is like none I've ever seen or heard of. Video games made the world a better place because they aloud some many to be influenced by Ryan.