It's been over a day since our community (and the overall video game community) was shaken to its core. Over 24 hours since a significant part of my life got broken to pieces. First came the shock, then the sadness and the tears took over for what seemed like an eternity. The barrage of messages, reactions and tributes that flooded the internet brought the mark of inevitability, of the cold harsh reality. It did happen.

A simple look at a photo, a snippet of a once joyful, funny and amazing moment was too much to bear looking at, on those initial couple of hours. Slowly, tear by tear, it got better. Well, not better, but more tolerable. The hours passed by, the day turned into night, the night turned into day. The new day didn't bring a new reality, unfortunately. It did bring a new question, though.

What do you do the day after? There are less reactions, less mentions and less messages. It is a new day, after all, and people go back to doing whatever people do. "You got to move on" people say. They are not wrong. Life doesn't stop, the machines are still working and the cogs are still turning. But, I'm stuck. Stuck between yesterday and whatever has to come next. Move on, but move on where? When? How?

What do you do the day after?

Hell, what do you do the day after that?

I've dealt with loss on many levels the last few years. The dearest of them was losing my wife last year. When I found out about Ryan yesterday, all those memories of loss came flooding back. You go forward, but a little piece of you seems left behind. You try and fill that void, but in truth, it fills itself with time. But things will never be the same. You just continue to move forward. One day at a time.

I'm still trying to figure that out too. Today has been somehow harder than yesterday.

You look down, and place one foot in front of the other, and keep doing that.

It still hits me once every few hours that the dude from Giant Bomb dot com called Ryan Davis whom I've seen in editorial video game videos for the past 5 years fucking died

what in the fuck..

Keep on living man. Live as long as you can.

Pretty much my thought process.

Last night, I wallowed in my favourite content from the site and watched Harmonix's stream. I read through almost every post on these forums, convincing myself that it was okay to feel so viscerally saddened by these events that happened literally on another side of the world from me.

Today, I played Saint's Row: The Third for the first time and bought an HD DVD player and a bunch of stupid HD DVDs for hella cheap because I felt the overwhelming urge to do something super dumb.

In truth, it kinda cheered me up but as today crawls to an end I still feel this crappy pit in my stomach. It'll go away over time, and I know that. I just wish all the best for his family and friends, I really can't imagine how they must be feeling right now.

We can take some solace in the fact that Ryan's public position affords him a legacy that will last a very, very long time. After all, the end goal in life, to me, is to enrich and inspire others and be remembered as having done so. He S Ranked that objective, to say the least. So what we do is pick up where Ryan left off, and love life the way he did. Do that, and Ryan may be gone, but he'll never truly die.

For my part i have already moved on. I'm still watching the old vids they've been putting up on the front page and i'm having a great time like we're supposed to while watching them and not thinking about what happened too much... i've always had an abnormally easy time dealing with death. The finality of it makes it easy for me i suppose...

I just try to remember the good stuff and move on from there.

It's gonna be easier with time of course and also when the site itself moves on. For now it's still right there in our face and in truth i'm more concerned with how the rest of the gang it coping with this. Most of them haven't said much and it's a different situation than with a lot of other gaming site. They weren't just colleagues that happened to get along. These guys were all best friends...

My brain hasn't completely processed it yet. Usually when this happens the thing that hits me the most is that I'll never hear their voice again. But with Ryan, there are so many videos and podcasts to listen to, which results in me not fully comprehending what has actually happened just yet. The first video of the crew in the office without Ryan is gonna be fucking brutal.

Eventually we'll move forward, and the pain will start to dull. Right now though, I don't know. It still really fucking hurts. I spent much of yesterday crying, following the tributes that came out, trying to make little gestures of my own to honor the man, and trying to put into writing how it could be that my heart is so thoroughly broken over the loss of a friend I never once met or spoke to. Upon waking up today most of the sadness and anger had been replaced with numbness, but upon visiting the site it all keeps coming back up. I'm squinting at the monitor as I try to write this.

This day has been even harder for me what with all the blogs and drawings and seeing Jeff's wiki edit history. I just miss him so much already.

I need to put this thought somewhere on the site and this thread is as good as any: All you guys who post regularly are as much Giant Bomb to me as the staff. I don't want anything to happen to you and reading about all your pain hurts me really, like... right here, you know? I'm not pointing at my crotch. When Claude's wife died, I was also super devastated. I don't even care anymore how weird all of this sounds. I want to lurk less and post more and I hope you all accept me and talk to me even with all my social anxieties and general awkwardness.

It hasn’t hit me yet; I looked at his twitter feed today as I sometimes do expecting new tweets and silly stuff.

It’s funny, I never spoken to the guy, but I feel like he is family or something.

Here is a tweet from the 3rd from Ryan:

I don’t know the context of the tweet but it really makes you think.

Rest in peace Mr. Davis.

The day after is often bittersweet. It's more positive than the day before but now you look to the future and it's a daunting task. I was lucky. Today the situation at work resulted in me spending four hours on a beach in the sun reading, outside of cell service as I waited for a fisherman to arrive. It was good to be able to disconnect for a little while and take a step back. I've been reading, watching and listening to Ryan Davis content on a near weekly basis for 8 years. It'll be strange to not have him around, and I know things will change, but that doesn't mean they'll get worse; they'll just be different.

From my experiences with loss in the past, the anger stage of grief is the worst. These forums will not be a pleasant place in two to three months. There will be many threads venting about the quality of the content, as well as flame wars over the smallest things.

Continue dealing with the best you can what you did the day before. Stay strong duders.

For some random reason, I remember Ryan mentioning on a couple of occassions that he had a slight affiinity for Fringe, so I've been binge watching that all day. You know what? It's pretty good. Damn that guy. He knew his shit.

I've had off from work today. Mostly lounging around playing Tekken but every few hours I'll be reminded and get a bit sad again. But I'm at least doing other things today and haven't been glum the entire day. Its funny but I think a quote from Saints Row 3 is pretty fitting. At the start of one of the missions Pierce goes "Life is for the living and shit, you can't mourn forever" in response to an openly grieving Shaundi over Gat's death.

And even though that whole game is silly the point remains Life is for the living. So go and live and celebrate the people we still have left and the good times ahead. Life is too short to live it angry or sad.

I'm still just trying to process this. I don't have anything else that I'd rather do. Just sit here and think.

I don't know, but this just keeps eating at my brain.

He's fucking gone isn't he? I just can't seem to process it at the moment.

I don't feel numb or empty, in fact I feel fine. Everything's just too fucking normal.

I immediately thought about you when I heard the news yesterday. I figured that of anyone here you'd be the best person to offer advice.

Who the heck knows where you go? Where are any of us going exactly?

You just keep going, and you'll be there. Where you're meant to be. Ryan certainly had thoughts of the future, but he got as far as he did. He leaves here with a trail of dreams unreached and words unsaid; yet that is not in itself a sad thing. That is the reality of our frail but passionate lives, with an unending horizon in the distance.

Your destination is always out of arm's reach as you wake up again and again, moving toward the goals you'll reach and the new goals you never will. Moving forward, it's never the same path as it was before tragedies like this, but even as things crumble all around you, you just keep going.

We're lucky that Ryan was such an unselfish man in the ways that really matter. At least to me I feel like I know what he'd want us to do and that's to follow his example in how he lived his life and treated people.

Not going lie it still hurts, but having a way out of the pain is incredibly helpful. I haven't always had that when I've lost someone who I deeply cared about.

and this is true of course too