Chris Hardwick's Blog, page 2215

This Slow Motion Video of Magnets Dancing Is Positively (and Negatively) Mesmerizing

Magnets, man. They can do everything from shrink quarters by 50 percent to build Mario levels on your fridge to play the key component in a visually fascinating clock. Their magnetic fields can cause a bunch of strange things to happen, but did you know that magnets are beautifully gifted dancers?

That’s what it looks like in the latest video from TAOFLEDERMAUS, anyway (via ViralViralVideos). Here’s how it came to be: According to the video description, the uploader was experimenting with macro shots filmed on a Chronos high speed camera, using LED lighting and filming at “around 4000 frames per second.” Then, upon accidentally dropping some hard drive magnets this aspiring scientist noticed that they attracted and repelled each other in bizarre ways. Ways that he figured could look interesting when filmed in slow motion. And boy was that correct.

The video is titled “Magnets look WEIRD in slow motion,” but we’d go so far as to call them beautiful. Especially when scored with cinematic music from Marc Teichert, the magnets, bouncing around and twirling about before eventually finding an opposite magnetic charge to reach out towards, look like they’re astronauts becoming familiar with the gravity of space, or perhaps angelic fish engaging in some type of underwater courtship. Whatever analogy you want to make, this is perhaps just a reminder that things in our everyday lives have beauty beyond what is obvious.

The video’s kind of a trip regardless of how you see it, so give it a whirl above, because you’re in for a surprisingly (and scientifically) serene few minutes.

Featured image: TAOFLEDERMAUS/YouTube

Half Hour Happy Hour #112: Drunksmas Day 12

They finally made it through to the 12th day of Drunksmas. Alison losing it on the floor while Tom and Alex talk New Year’s resolutions.

Follow @HalfHourHappyHr and hosts @alisonhaislip, @alexalbrecht and Tom “Super Volcano” Krajewski on Twitter

YouTube Chef Recreates ARCHER’s ‘Eggs Woodhouse’

Only an animated super spy like Stirling Archer could survive his highly indulgent lifestyle on FX’s comedy series, Archer. Sure, Archer may actually be dead after the season 7 finale, but that’s never stopped him before! And now you too can enjoy a taste of Archer’s opulent breakfast dish, if you have the time, the money, and the patience to accurately recreate the infamous Eggs Woodhouse!

Via Laughing Squid, the latest episode of YouTube chef Andrew Rea’s Binging with Babish tackles Archer‘s Eggs Woodhouse recipe; which was first published in How to Archer: The Ultimate Guide to Espionage and Style and Women and Also Cocktails Ever Written back in 2012. Since the book was credited to “Stirling Archer,” we’re not really sure who came up with the recipe, but its ingredients are so unusually expensive that Rea actually seemed to feel guilty about preparing the dish. To compensate, Rea decided to use the video as an opportunity to raise funds for Hour Children, a non-profit charity organization that works “primarily with mothers recently released from prison, and features a food pantry where members of the community can receive the help they need to provide nutritious meals for their families.”

As for the dish itself, the rich flavor took Rea by surprise as he took the first bite and found himself barely able to swallow it. In fact, Rea only managed to sample his Eggs Woodhouse a few times on camera before leaving the majority of it untouched.

Fans of Archer may also remember that celebrity chef Alton Brown made an animated guest appearance on the season 3 DVD extras as he and Archer had a bit of a disagreement while making Eggs Woodhouse. Rea used a small clip from that segment in his video, but the rest of the footage can be seen here.

Are you eager to try Eggs Woodhouse for yourself? Prepare your “cholesterol Katrina” in the comment section below!

Image: FX

This Artist Creates Huge Celebrity Portraits Using Only Donuts

The images on the screen you’re reading this article on at this very moment are made up of pixels, and that goes for any other digitally rendered image you’ve viewed on your laptop or phone. Candice CMC is an pixel artist of sorts, but instead of a pain application, her pixels are bigger, and they’re actually donuts.

Her process is as follows: She photographs donuts individually, evaluates their colors, and then uses them to create large-scale portraits of figures like Marilyn Monroe, Alfred E. Neuman, Spock, and others. Like most small-scale pixel art, it gets easier to tell what’s being represented when you’re farther away, but the good news is that when you’re up close, you’re looking at a wall of donuts.

Here’s a fun math exercise: Let’s figure out how many calories are in these donut arrangements, putting aside for a second the fact that it’s just an arrangement of donut photos and not a tiling of donuts that ever existed in one place. In the portrait of Van Gogh below, the frame is 22 donuts wide by 28 donuts tall, meaning there are 616 donuts. A quick Google search tells us that 250 calories is a fair estimation for a glazed donut, so multiply that out and in total, we have 154,000 calories, or 77 days worth, assuming a 2,000 calorie, donut-only diet.

The lesson we’ve learned through this: Instead of trying to eat that many donuts, let’s just appreciate what Candice CMC can do with them visually instead, with a few of her works below, and more here. If you’re so inclined to buy one of these works for yourself, you can do so here, but be aware that this is high art we’re talking about, so you’ll be paying high art prices to spice up that living room wall.

A photo posted by Konbini (@konbini) on Jul 4, 2016 at 5:58am PDT

A photo posted by Konbini (@konbini) on Jul 4, 2016 at 5:58am PDT

A photo posted by Konbini (@konbini) on Jul 4, 2016 at 5:59am PDT

Featured image: Ardt Gallery

Marvel’s STAR WARS Comics to Honor Carrie Fisher

Welcome to the second to last Comics Relief of 2016, comics fans! We start this week with Marvel’s plans to honor the legacy of Carrie Fisher in the pages of their Star Wars comics. Read on for all the details.

Marvel’s Poe Dameron series will pay tribute to Carrie Fisher

pic.twitter.com/Rh8IuoqpSx

— Phil Noto (@philnoto) December 27, 2016

The world is reeling from the untimely death of Carrie Fisher earlier this week, and right now the folks at Disney/Lucasfilm are probably figuring the best way to properly honor Fisher’s iconic Princess Leia in future Star Wars films. But comics take a lot less time to produce than movies, and already comics creators who grew up with Fisher’s iconic portrayal are finding ways to pay tribute.

Because of Fisher’s sudden passing, Marvel’s Poe Dameron writer Charles Soule announced on Twitter that he has plans to reshape a scene in an upcoming issue to recognize the Star Wars legend. In his tweet, Soule said, “There’s a funeral in Poe Dameron #14, and Leia’s present – writing that scene today. Wasn’t originally about her, but now it will be.” The current Poe Dameron series is drawn by artist Phil Noto, who released a lovely rendition of Fisher as Leia on Twitter, which you can see above. Issue #14 of Poe Dameron is set to hit in early 2016. [CBR]

DC Comics releases trailer for Rebirth titles

DC Comics’ Rebirth was a huge success for the company in 2o16, and now the publisher has created a trailer for the upcoming collections of the first Rebirth story arcs, which are due to hit early next year. You can watch the first full Rebirth trailer above.

Brian Bendis announces departure from Guardians of the Galaxy

A little more than a year and a half after leaving the X-Men behind, Marvel’s number one writer Brian Michael Bendis is now departing the world of the Guardians of the Galaxy as well. Bendis has been the primary writer for the Guardians of the Galaxy since since 2013, a good year before the movie version made Star-Lord, Groot and Rocket household names. Now Bendis has begun his final Guardians storyline, “Grounded,” is last week’s Guardians of the Galaxy #15.

As to why Bendis is leaving the Guardians now, he told ComicBook.com, “Number one, I had an end story that I’ve been building to and it’s time to unleash it. Number two, there were other projects offered to me that I was like, ‘Oh, I do want to do that!’ and something has to go. Even I have a bandwidth cap, even though no one in Marvel thinks that I do.” What could those projects be? Mum’s the word, just as it is with who the new creative team will be for the Guardians once Bendis leaves, although he already knows who it will be. For more on Bendis’ departure from the title, read the full interview at the following link: [Comic Book]

Scott Snyder teases Batman event series

In last week’s Comics Relief, we mentioned a big Batman-centric event from DC Comics coming next year, from the award winning team of Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo, whose Batman run was one of the highlights of the New 52 era. Now in an interview, Snyder has shed a wee bit more light on just what this series will entail, saying the series will be “celebratory, and huge, and crazy.” Snyder also revealed that he recently spent time breaking the story with DC CCO Geoff Johns, who is of course the man behind the current success of  DC Rebirth.

“Greg [Capullo] calls it our Batman heavy metal rock opera. It’s going to be a big, epic Batman story with flaming armor, an over-the-top capstone to a lot of the stuff that we’ve done with him. It’s all mapped out. I’ve just been out to Burbank with Geoff Johns going over it, and going over what he’s doing. It was great. It was one of the best story meetings that I’ve ever had. We sat there for a couple of days and really tightened up some of the screws. Geoff was incredibly generous and helpful with it.”

Snyder then added, “I don’t want it to be grim. I don’t want it to be superheroes arguing over something. Superheroes won’t be fighting superheroes. I want it to be celebratory, and huge, and crazy. I am going for out of control dinosaurs and lasers. It should be fun.” For more hints at this new DCU event, click on the following link for the full interview: [CBR]

Frank Miller makes Trump reference in Dark Knight III: The Master Race

In Frank Miller’s original Dark Knight Returns, the story was filled with talking heads from the news media commenting on the event of the series, as meta-commentary on the then-new phenomenon of 24 hour cable news. In 1986, Miller could not have imagined social media like Twitter, where people who were about to become President of the United States would be able to go off on random tangents in a very public way.

So in keeping with the original Dark Knight series providing commentary on our cultural climate, the current issue of Dark Knight III: The Master Race has talking heads, but they are all from the world of social media…including a dead ringer for our President Elect. The panel (seen above) has him commenting on the recent Kryptonian invasion of Earth, which was defeated by Batman and Superman. I say the panel pretty much speaks for itself. [CBR]

March is Venom month at Marvel

In March, Marvel Comics celebrates everyone’s favorite alien symbiote antihero Venom, with a series of “venomized” variant covers. Among the 23 covers are the following:  Invincible Iron Man #5 by Rick Leonardi, X-Men: Prime #1 by Kris Anka, Doctor Strange #18 by Tess Fowler,  Black Panther #12 by Elizabeth Torque, Captain America: Steve Rogers #13 by Tom Raney, and several more. You can see all the available covers are in our gallery below. [Bleeding Cool]

Images: Marvel Comics / DC Comics 

Hear Emma Watson Singing BEAUTY AND THE BEAST’s “Something There”

Though Disney’s live action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast is just a few short months away, we still haven’t gotten too clear a glimpse of what the production has in store. So far, the bulk of what we’ve gleaned from the picture is the visuals—most prominently in this category, how the once hand-drawn set of fine China will take form via the good graces of CGI. Of course, when it comes to a musical, visuals are only half the recipe. At last, we get our first taste of what Beauty and the Beast is offering in audio. The below soundbite, shared on Instagram by producer Jack Morrissey (via ScreenCrush), features star Emma Watson handling a few notes of the romantic ditty “Something There.” Take a listen:

A video posted by Jack Morrissey (@therealjackmorrissey) on Dec 29, 2016 at 7:00am PST

If you’ll recall, “Something There” articulates the evolution of Belle’s (Watson) feelings for the Beast (Dan Stevens) from revulsion to affection. It’s a chipper and celebratory number, merrily skirting past the fact that their relationship started out with him keeping her imprisoned against her will. The piece of the song we hear in the above post is actually a melodic reprise of the refrain of the original animated Beauty and the Beast‘s more popular opening number, “Belle.”

Though we only get to spend a few seconds basking in Watson’s pipes, it seems to me that she’s nailing the Belle sound fairly well. But what do you think? Does the above soundbite inspire confidence, or are you reserving optimism until after a third viewing? Let us know!

Featured image: Disney

Watch These Science Students Hot Potato a Fireball All the Way Around A Room

It’s tough to believe that this is something we still have to tell kids, but hey, science is fun! To put it in over-simplified terms, science is observing and learning about the ways in which the world works, and our planet and the components that inhabit it can be pretty fascinating. Sometimes, high school science class can be more about reading up on mitochondria than doing cool lab experiments, but earlier this year, apparent science teacher Dan Clinch decided to let his students have some fun by becoming firebenders from Avatar: The Last Airbender.

In a video taken from his classroom (via Sploid), a group of 11 students stand around with cupped hands full of bubbles before Clinch holds a lighter to the first student’s hand. Once the bubbles ignite and turn the kid’s hand into a ball of flame, he passes the fire to the student next to him, and so on until all 11 kids have touched it and the last one mic-drops it.

The clip itself doesn’t provide much context, although the title suggests that part of the bubbles’ composition involves propane. The commenters of the Reddit post that seems to have popularized this clip have explained what’s probably going on here, though: Propane gas was blown into a container of soap to create the bubbles filled with flammable gas, so when the head from the flame bursts the soap bubbles, the gas inside ignites. Water or soap on the kids’ hands seems to protect them so long as they don’t keep the fire on their hands for too long, to prevent the domino reaction from reaching their palms.

Before trying this at home, though, heed the cautionary tale of another Reddit commenter:

“My 9th grade science teacher was doing the same trick at the front of the class tossing the bubbles and lighting them mid-air, but didn’t notice that a series of bubbles had escaped and stuck themselves to the roof. The resulting conflagration spread backdraft style across the roof, but luckily the water system wasn’t triggered. We all solemnly promised not to tell anyone, in exchange for couple of pizzas for the class the following week.”

Featured image: Nintendo

The Beautiful Animation of AKIRA Is Detailed in New Video

There is so much to love with every video essay The Nerdwriter produces. His channel has provided the internet with hours of interesting and unique perspectives on any number of topics. But the ones we tend to love the most are his really nerdy explorations of things we’re already obsessed with, like his latest take on the animation of Katsuhiro Otomo’s 1988 cult classic Akira.

The video delves deep into the groundbreaking animation that helped to make Akira a film that still stands the test of time, pointing out that the lighting effects in the film are something to truly marvel at and how some effects are created by computer and then overlaid into the final product. All this is not to say that modern effects aren’t intricate but, to a certain extent, they can’t hold a candle to the work involved in creating cel animation by hand.

The Nerdwriter‘s main focus in his video is to, ahem, illuminate us about how vital lighting is to the film. The city of Neo-Tokyo is consistently drenched in some form of artificial light. The ever-present neon and the strong beams tethered to officers and their vehicles serve as reminders that no one in the city is entirely free from anyone’s gaze, lending a paranoid feel to the already unpleasant world in the film. The daunting task of creating this world in cel animation means that 24 times a second, every buzzing neon glow, shadow cast, and glint of reflected light had to be painstakingly animated by hand. With artificial light serving as a constant reminder of the dystopian nature of the film and the blinding laser satellite-induced white light at its climax, this was undoubtedly something animators had to pay extra attention to in order to bring it to life so beautifully.

Once again, Nerdwriter has given us a new way to look at something we already love and brought out a new underlying beauty some may not have noticed. With the knowledge of the deliberate use of light in myriad gorgeous ways, we’ll never look at Akira the same way again.

What are your favorite uses of light in animation? Can CGI hold a candle to hand-drawn animation? Let’s discuss in the comments below!

Image: Toho

Ryan Gosling and LA LA LAND Director Team for Neil Armstrong Biopic

It’s been almost 50 years since we touched down on the surface of the moon, and humankind’s thirst for the nectars of a world beyond our atmosphere grows heavier by the day. We’ve sent robots to Mars and made wonderful advancements in space travel technology, but no efforts since have quite matched the miracle of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin setting foot on the face of our chalky white neighbor. Although the grandeur of this feat will be no easy thing to replicate, the filmmaking team newly signed on for the task is at least no stranger to using the big screen as a canvass for great spectacle.

Variety reports that Damien Chazelle, director of Whiplash and this holiday season’s favorite La La Land, will direct a developing picture about Armstrong’s life and moon mission. What’s more, the film–presently titled First Man–will feature Chazelle’s La La Land star Ryan Gosling in the lead role.

As if the notion of a Neil Armstrong biopic, and one directed by the increasingly Oscar-friendly Chazelle, were not a shoe-in for the focus of inevitable Academy Awards discussions, last year’s winner for Best Original Screenplay, Spotlight co-writer Josh Singer, is handling the First Man script.

Though our greatest achievement in space travel does indeed date back nearly half a century, the whimsy of all that is extraterrestrial has stuck with us all the while. It seems as though we get a cinematic celebration of space travel every year or so, with Ridley Scott’s The Martian, Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, and Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity being three recent (and especially creative) examples of the tradition.

And it’s a good tradition! Movies like these have helped maintain interest in space exploration, so much so that NASA worked with director Scott to promote his ’15 picture. No doubt, if Chazelle infuses his Armstrong biopic with the same ardent passion that he pumped into Whiplash and La La Land (not to mention the criminally underseen, delightfully kooky Grand Piano), then the film is sure to get us amped up for the great beyond all over again.

Share your thoughts on a Chazelle-directed, Gosling-starring Armstrong movie below!

Featured Image: NTDTV/YouTube

Image: Summit Entertainment

Nerdist Remembers Carrie Fisher

When the news broke that Carrie Fisher died, the Internet rose up as one and cried out with sadness. Our princess, our General, is gone. Here at Nerdist, the mourning felt quieter, more intimate. For many of us, Star Wars and the community that grew on the Internet around science fiction, books, movies, and what may be labelled by the world as “nerd culture” is home, and Carrie Fisher has always been there.

How do we go forward without our general, the woman who told us to be anyone we felt we needed to be and wasn’t afraid to sass a stormtrooper? Below, Nerdist writers reflect and remember the woman who was so much more than a metal bikini or a single role. She was a universe all rolled up into one.

Nerdist writers remember…

“Many of us grew up on stories of fairy tale princesses, waiting to be rescued, with no more skills to their name than looking pretty and maybe attracting birds and squirrels. I was very, very little when Star Wars came out, so I was right in the middle of all of that. In the midst of the tulle and ribbons walked Princess Leia, a kick ass chick who stood right in front of the bad guy and gave him what for. This was no princess I knew about. She didn’t gush over her rescuers. She took over the rescue! She was a Rebel leader, a Senator…wait, what? She changed everything for me. She showed me that I wasn’t supposed to wait around for anything. I was supposed to fight for what I believe in. If help comes, great. If not, well, I’d fight on anyway. May the Force be with you, General.” – Jenna Busch

“All of my early Carrie Fisher memories are forever tied to Star Wars, but her influence touched many areas of life. She taught generations of people that it’s okay to be yourself, flaws and all. But right now I mostly keep thinking that there would be no Buffy Summers without Leia Organa. Carrie Fisher’s gutsy portrayal of a young Princess and veteran General in space inspired the creation of so many strong female characters to follow.” – Jessica Maria MacFarlane

“While Star Wars was huge to me, I was always more into the villains and ambiguous or flawed characters than the straight-arrow good guys (listen, YOU try going through life with every human being you meet saying ‘Luke, I am your father!’), so when it comes to Carrie Fisher, rather than remember her forever as Princess Leia, I like to remember her as what she became: a smart, witty writer and unabashed public speaker who gave no f**ks if people judged her for being who she was, because she OWNED it. All too often, we exalt a supposed ‘political incorrectness’ that’s really just nastiness, but by backing up her gloriously loud mouth with her openness about mental illness, addiction, and agnosticism–things you aren’t supposed to discuss in polite company, but that some people desperately need to hear about–Carrie Fisher became a real-world hero.” – Luke Thompson

“Carrie Fisher was a role model for girls, for tomboys, for nerds, and for people struggling to manage their mental illness, but on top of all of that, she was a role model for aging. As a kid, I found myself excited to grow up if it meant I could follow a path like hers: become tougher, seek revenge on the villain who puts you in chains, whittle your witty remarks, deal with heartbreak à la When Harry Met Sally… with a good sense of humor, and, most importantly, let your personality define your character. The older she got, the stronger, tougher, and more open Fisher became. We can only hope to do the same.” – Nina Corcoran

“Princess Leia was the first character I remember being introduced to who was not simply a princess, but a brave, smart, capable, and fiercely independent champion. I was A New Hope Leia for Halloween in grade school, and I used to ride my bike around town, pretending to be Return of the Jedi Leia zooming across Endor on a stolen Imperial speeder. Leia may be fictional, but it was Carrie Fisher who brought her to life in a way no one else could have. Fisher was a remarkably bright woman, whose candor, strength, and humor—even when discussing deeply personal matters—will be sorely missed.” – Juliet Bennett Rylah

“Carrie Fisher was fun, kind, a free spirit, and her obsession over her dog made me love her even more than I already did. I am so thankful for her bravery and all the work she’s done to try and end the stigma behind mental illness. She spoke her mind and wasn’t afraid of a fight. She brought a spark and magic to the role of Leia Organa, and gave us one of the most amazing female characters in science fiction. She will be truly missed.” – Kendall Ashley

“To me, Leia was always the hero of the Star Wars films, and Carrie a hero of real life. Luke ran away to an island, hiding out of fear of who he might become–(remember this, Rey, even if he is your dad!)–but Leia, like Carrie, faced reality head on, becoming what she (and subsequently others) needed to be. She wasn’t driven by ego, she saw injustice and took it upon herself to fight it head on. That’s what a real hero does. Carrie saw the absurdity of life and the circumstances she found herself in and turned them into gold. She wrote passionately and ferociously, and she lived even harder, learning and loving and laughing all the while, bringing us better books, better films, and better mental health awareness than we would’ve had without her. She never wavered, her attitude never faltered, and there was no weakness to her tenacity. Carrie wasn’t just strong, she was living strength–a human conduit for entertainment and catharsis taken from her very real pain. Whether playing daughter, mother, script doctor, playwright, princess, or general: Carrie Fisher gave us hope in the face of absurdity and strength when so many others would simply take flight.” – Alicia Lutes

“Carrie Fisher created one of pop culture’s great icons. Growing up, society told me princesses were just an object of desire. A thing you rescued from a castle or a dragon. With Princess Leia, Fisher shattered that image. She was the ultimate badass. Never afraid, strong when everyone else was weak, a leader and a warrior. She choked out Jabba the Hutt, people. Fisher was somebody that everyone could, and did, look up to. After watching Star Wars as a kid, I remember thinking, “Damn, I wanna be a princess. They kick all kinds of butt.” When I played the Star Wars roleplaying game for the first time, my character was a royal dignitary I modeled after Princess Leia. My friends were Jedi and bounty hunters, I was a badass princess and I loved it. Hell, a part of me still wants to be a princess, and that’s because Fisher made it the most powerful thing in the world.” – Benjamin Bailey

“Being a little gay boy who loved sci-fi, I never really related to the hyper masculine heroes of the genre, as much as I might have enjoyed stories about them. And then, Princess Leia came into my life, and she was everything. Smart, sassy, sarcastic, but also caring, and a capable leader who takes crap from no one. When Leia is first introduced in Star Wars, she’s standing up to and giving attitude to a terrifying seven-foot-tall man clad in black armor, and she’s not even blinking as he stares her down and tries to intimidate her. She simply ain’t havin’ it. That’s who I wanted to be. I might have told the other kids on the playground I was pretending to be Luke or Han…but I was really pretending to be Princess Leia. And when the kids bullied me and called me names and reminded me how I was not like them, I did my best to channel my inner Leia, and use my wits and smart mouth to fight them, Leia Organa style. As a kid I worshipped the character, but as an adult, I’ve done my best to channel my inner Carrie Fisher, the real person, and have tried to be as smart, witty, and self deprecating as she was. She showed that if you can’t laugh at yourself, then life just isn’t worth living. I am who I am in no small part to Carrie Fisher and what she represented in the world, and will be forever grateful.” – Eric Diaz

“Carrie Fisher was my hero, plain and simple. She was my role model as Princess (and later General) Leia, fighting against seemingly insurmountable odds, and she was my inspiration as Carrie, offering up refreshing honesty about her struggles. Over the years since my Star Wars fandom first took root I’ve learned so much about Fisher–through her writing, her interviews, her unsung contributions–and yet it still feels like we all only managed to scratch the surface of her impact on our lives. Carrie Fisher taught me to be daring, to be brave, to be bold and to be unapologetic about it all. Her heart was truly a kyber heart, the strongest of them all.” – Carly Lane

“Long before I could admit to myself, or even really understand, that I didn’t want to dress or look or act like a boy, I saw in Leia Organa exactly what I wished I could be. As a beautiful princess leaping from planet to planet in a huge-scale intergalactic adventure, Leia was enchanting from the ground up. But Carrie Fisher, uniquely self-possessed and enduringly confident in her portrayal of the character–and, as we’d all come to know, her life beyond the screen–helped to turn a desperately buried wish into something I’d eventually realize I could be proud of. Now, I never feel stronger than when bringing Leia out from within me.” – Michael Arbeiter

“What is there to say about Carrie Fisher that hasn’t already been said? She was funny, brave and so damn beautiful on the inside and out. A badass princess on the screen, a kick-ass writer behind the scenes and a trailblazer in every sense of the word, I’ll never forget her heart, her vulnerability, her honesty, and her resolve to no longer compromise her values in an industry where people do that all too easily. Thanks for being you, Carrie.” – Keisha Hatchett

“Above all, Carrie Fisher was an inspiration to me to get up and keep going. Facing criticism? Eff it. People telling you to be, as she said, “tilty and squeezy?” Screw ’em. I listened to her speak on a few panels and learned from her sharp and acerbic wit, her brutal honesty, and her intelligence. She was a force of nature; she faced adversity and did so with pizzazz–we should all hope and aspire to do the same.” – Amy Ratcliffe

Fisher died on December 27th after suffering a massive cardiac event shortly before Christmas while traveling from London to Los Angeles. She will live on in the scripts she doctored, the books she wrote, the films she starred in, and the glorious Twitter presence that she embraced in her final years. We will miss her forever, but something tells this nerdy writer that somewhere–buoyed by the Force, perhaps–Carrie Fisher will be with us, always.

Share your memories of Fisher with me on Twitter @bookoisseur or in the comments below.

Image: Lucasfilm