For those who don’t know, Belarus is the stereotypical ’yandere’ character in Hetalia who is obsessed with marrying her older brother Russia. I had never ran into weeaboos at a convention before but I met the worst Belarus cosplayer the last convention I went to.
Her wig looked like she bought it at party city and she harassed the Russia cosplayers. At first, when we were all waiting for the Hetalia panel to start, it was all in good fun when she was chasing a fem!Russia cosplayer around. But then the fem!Russia cosplayer legitimately tried hiding from her and told her to leave her alone.
Eventually we got into the panel and I was in the row behind this Belarus. She was pretty obnoxious and kept raising her hand over and over again, even after she got called on to answer a question, when there were people with real questions for the voice actors who hadn’t had a chance to ask anything yet. The question she asked was, in a very poor imitation of Belarus’ voice, “Will any of you come between big brother and me?”
We went to the photoshoot and she was there. There she and another Belarus cosplayer harassed another Russia cosplayer. I felt bad for the poor lad because they were pulling at his coat and hanging onto him and everything and he told them to stop repeatedly. And the main Belarus was like really into character too much. When all the girl characters came together to a photo, I was cosplaying as Hungary, she kept tugging possessively on the back of my dress.
The next day I talked to the Russia cosplayer and he told me how he was really annoyed and how he hadn’t been playing around when he told them to stop. Anyway, the point of the story is that just because you’re cosplaying a possessive or ‘yandere’ character does not mean you need to act IN character the whole time and you especially should not harass other cosplayers and stop when they tell you to.
