Welcome to my journal, which is an extremely mid-00s thing that I totally and unironically love.

I'm a 31 year old Canadian woman. I work in a fandom-adjacent industry but use this journal predominantly for fandom stuff. My current fandoms are Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy and Star Wars, but I've been in fandom for about twenty years, so I have previously wandered around The Last Of Us, Assassin's Creed, the Borgias, Overwatch, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Kingdom Hearts, DC Comics, Smallville, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Bleach, Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings, Naruto, etc... 

I predominantly do cosplay, 3D modelling and fanfic, but I used to be quite active in the LJ and DWRP community.

 I've had longstanding issues with finding bras that fit and are comfortable, to the point where even shopping internationally there's really just 2-3 bras I like at any given time, so whenever those bras get discontinued I'm back at square one finding another that fits. Right now all my bras are either hideously uncomfortable or are so worn out they're starting to become functionally useless, so earlier this year I decided to transition into just making my own bras/support. I started out by commissioning two custom patterns + a corset from a professional corset-maker with a lot of burlesque experience, as it suits me and the style of clothes I like to wear most. Obviously that's a long process, so only this past week did my first piece from her arrive, along with the patterns themselves so I can make more for myself, and I'm so thrilled.

It's obviously going to take a long time to build myself a collection of new, custom made bras and bodices, but it was pretty incredible today going out in my custom one. It's built like a corset so it has an immense amount of support, meaning I can wear it strapless, but it has full cups so it has a very modern silhouette on top. It was amazing not having any weight on my shoulders, as my chest was supported entirely by the bodice + built-in cups... I truly fucking think that bra-making was perfected half a century ago and it's been a downhill plunge ever since as more and more off-the-rack companies narrow size ranges and more and more women fit themselves into "good enough" fits that don't actually suit them. I felt fucking great today.

I hope by this time next year I will have enough of a collection to be wearing corsets and custom-made bras full time, it'd be so good for my back haha.

If you don't remember much about LJ/DW layouts or never knew, and you wanted to update your layout, you can find a lot of custom layouts around online. A lot of the preview images are dead because it's been 5-10 years, but I spent a chunk of this morning combing through old accounts that were popular for layouts, such as MintyApple and Layout Lounge, are still in great form.

You can also expand your options by importing popular LJ templates "Smooth Sailing" and "Flexible Squares"; importing instructions are here. Once you've installed those, you can use basically any custom layout for either of those LJ layouts on Dreamwidth, as well.

CCS and HTML is wild after not needing to use it for a long time but it's pretty cool to actually have a choice over the appearance of your social media beyond one of eight colours and a single icon/header...

Just some thoughts I put together after I finished FF7R. Spoilers, obviously.

 

( Spoilers )