"You're my waifu."

I dressed as Rose Quartz from Steven Universe and a guy sort of dressed as a character from the same show approached me by coming up right behind me and said "You're my waifu" while I was talking to a vendor.

He had the greasiest hair I have ever seen and really bad body odor. He asked for a pic and I said okay and then he asked to pose with me kissing his cheek and I said no. He got upset and said that I had to because he loved Rose blah blah blah and I didn't know how to disengage.

Funnily enough a Pearl cosplayer intervened and told him to beat it.

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Awkward.

Some girl asks me to sing a duet in the karaoke room which I agree to. 30 seconds in and I realize that it's some anime song that is sung in Japanese, and it's 8 minutes long.

Longest and most cringiest 8 minutes of my life while butchering the Japanese language in front of an audience.

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"Embarrassing and painful."

I was dressed as Edward Elric, friend was dressed as Envy from FMA. The show was still super popular back then and 'glomping' was a thing. Some girl ran up behind me at top speed and jumped on my back (and I'm tall, not short like Ed), and bashed me into a table and brought me to my knees. It was horribly embarrassing, and painful.

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D'oh!

More funny then cringey, but my husband doesn't really attend cons anymore because he feels he's too old for them. Before he stopped going we attended Anime Central in 2002 in Chicago. We passed by a group of Harry Potter cosplayers wearing striped scarves and my husband turned to me and said, "It's good to know kids still like Doctor Who."

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"I was worried about more cake being eaten."

Had small cake pieces with me for friends, carried it in an open plastic box in my hands. In the tram to the convention I met an older lady, we started talking about my costume and why all these funny looking people are here for and so on. While I explained it to her she was suddenly looking for something in her handbag, pulled out a small plastic spoon and helped herself with my cake while listening to me. I was too confused to say anything and let her finish.

I even jumped out of the train a station earlier because I was worried about more cake being eaten. Weird story but looking back now I should have offered her more, I don't know what it takes to make you eat a stranger's cake in a tram without asking first if you can have some.

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"Whatcha doing later?? Wanna grab a coffee?"

I was cosplaying a popular children's show character, Buster from Arthur. A mom tried flirting with me in front of her child after taking the photo. "Whatcha doing later? Wanna grab a coffee?"

The worst I've seen? This guy fully walks up to this girl and cups her breast. He wanted to see if they were real.

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"There! Don't you feel better?"

I do some pretty revealing cosplay, so you'd think I'd have lots of cringey stories, but 99% of people at cons are completely lovely. The only thing that really stands out is a woman who tried to shame me.

I'd cosplayed Cammy from Street Fighter earlier in the day and changed into street clothes later. This lady came up to me when I was clearly in the middle of a conversation with a group of friends and the first words out of her mouth were "There! Don't you feel better?" I was confused, and asked her what she was talking about. "Oh, you know... that thing you had on before. You know you don't have to do that to yourself."

I was speechless, so she continued. "Not that you didn't look nice, but guys will never respect you if you do that sort of thing." I looked around at my friends, who were clearly just as baffled as me, and cracking up. I started to stammer some sort of response like "...thank you?" when my husband stepped in and straight up told her to piss off. So this story has a happy ending. But the whole interaction just made me feel icky and I definitely cringe thinking about it now.

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"He was looking at her like he'd just found a unicorn..."

Few years back my then-girlfriend was cosplaying Chell from portal at a con. It was mostly great, everyone and their mom wanted a photo with her. Except this one guy who decided to grill her on how much she really knew about portal. He was looking at her like he'd just found a unicorn, but she was pissed as hell that some stranger thought she needed to prove herself to him. I think he thought he was flirting.

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"She keeps getting attacked by a bunch of kids who can't be older than 14."

I have a friend who cosplayed a Homestuck character back in 2012. I can't remember which, but I know it was a troll. Anyway, the author of the comic was present at the convention so the fans were out in droves; and rabid too.

So we're walking around and she keeps getting attacked by a bunch of kids who can't be older than 14. We're 18/19 so we obviously nope out asap. People hit her with prop weapons, come up and try to tackle her, ask for kisses, flirt, and one even tried feeling her up. This all culminates with some bozo dressed like a jugalo hitting her over the head with a bowling pin and breaking the horns she had made for the event.

Needless to say she's furious and excuses herself to the bathroom. A few minutes later she's back; having dumped her horns, jacket, contacts, and wiped the face paint off. We spent the rest of the day in a foul mood. The next day we heard that a bunch of Homestuck graffiti had been found in the surrounding area and the convention had to move hotels next year.

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Teen Titans, GO!

I was cosplaying as Red X from Teen Titans and I had this 16 year old girl dressed as Raven follow me around and try and get me to kiss her all day long. I was 20 at the time.

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"Other people want a hug, too!"

So, I went to my first con a few years ago. I wasn't brave enough to dress up so I wanted to take pics etc. I saw a really amazing Doctor Who cosplay so I asked him for a hug and pic. He was really enthusiastic about it and we had a pic ready to go until I heard a gruff "Hurry up other people want a hug too", this large middle age lady in a tight tank top was giving us this glare. Legit the cosplayer went from happy to miserable as soon as we took a pic. Like, holy cow the cosplayers aren't props, they're people. Don't demand physical contact you have to ask. He definitely didn't give up a hug for her.

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Ummm... what?

I dressed up as Abraham Lincoln to go see the Lincoln movie (my buddy dressed up as John Wilkes Booth). I had an extremely emotional interaction with a man of color as he thanked me for abolishing slavery. That in itself wasn't cringey. What was cringey was that everyone thought I was weird for dressing up.

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"I felt like a birthday party mascot..."

When I was in college, I went to a small cosplay event wearing a cardboard box that says "GUNDAM" on it. This middle aged suburban mom stopped me and looked to her fedora-wearing college-age son, and asked him in an almost baby voice "do you wanna take a picture with the Gundam?"

I agreed to it, but I felt like a birthday party mascot getting a picture with the kids. Except this "kid" was about my age.

Further back, in high school, my at-the-time girlfriend and I went to a cosplay gathering. I made some comment about Macross Frontier ("It's a show about pretty boys in giant robots" or something along those lines. I still haven't finished that show) and then some person with 10 years on us felt the need to sit down by us, whip out his laptop, and pull up 4chan to school us on mecha anime.

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"I had forgotten about the video until that email..."

I cosplayed Naruto when I was 13 and a Sasuke cosplayer who was 14 'made out' with me -- which was basically biting my mouth. It went semi-viral on Youtube to the point where I was offered money.

I had forgotten about the video until that email, and then decimated my whole Youtube account when I was 15-16.

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"I don't cosplay Frank anymore."

I cosplayed Frank N Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show at a comic con about a year ago. I had a lot of pleasant interactions with other cosplayers during the day, lots of "ooh I love that movie!", "hey do the Time Warp!" sort of conversations. A few people hit on me (I'm a woman in fishnets and a corset at a comic con...that was expected). Nothing to weird or uncomfortable.

And then there was this one dude and his friend. They kept following me around, talking to me about weirdly personal topics, and getting far too handsy. Eventually I started to get nervous, so I excused myself to the bathroom. I just wanted to distance myself from them a little. As I go to leave, the guy goes "Wait, before you go, can I get a picture?" Okay. Fine. Just take a photo then leave me alone.

So the guy grabs me, picks me up, throws me over his shoulder so my butt is sticking up in the air (in fishnets and bikini bottoms) and his buddy takes a picture. Then he drops me back on the ground, and the two guys take off. It all happened in about ten seconds so I barely had time to react. Some guy dressed as Deadpool helped me up and walked me to the security booth to report the guys, but nothing ever came of it. So weird, cringey, and terrifying.

I don't cosplay Frank anymore.

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That was unexpected.

I dressed as Junkrat for a con, at the time I had no idea how many kids played Overwatch. So for the entire day all I got was 10 year olds shouting references and wanting photos with me and their parents giving me strange looks.

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Now you see me...

I was cosplaying Black Cat from Spider-Man. It was a very tight and form fitting costume and I opted not to wear underwear because you could very clearly see the lines in the costume if I did. Had a guy come up behind me and unzip my suit, which wouldn't have been so bad if the zipper didn't go all the way down to the bottom of my butt. For about ten seconds my pale back and ass was very much exposed.

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Still fun, though!

Went with a Comic Con with my girlfriend, who was dressed as Black Canary (I was Green Arrow). Naturally some people asked for pictures of us/with us, alright cool no big deal. What was weird were the amount of guys that wanted a picture of just her. One guy even came up, asked if he could take a picture with us, and after we agreed, he handed me the camera. Oh, ok, I see what this is.

But the cringiest moment was this one guy, maybe 20 years older than us. He asked for a picture of her, was used to it at this point so it's whatever, then proceeds to spend a good sixty seconds taking the photo. I don't know if he was taking multiple photos or trying to get the perfect boob pic or what, but ain't no way it takes you a full minute to take a single photo on a cell phone. Still, the day was super fun, and hopefully we get a chance to go back in the future.

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Go away!

My sister and I were cosplaying two dudes (I'm also a girl) who were popularly shipped together. We were followed around all three days of the convention by a girl who wanted us to make out for photos. She also encouraged us to buy anything related to the series in the dealer hall, which was annoying and weird. She found us again the next year, too, and was incredibly obnoxious to our friend who was cosplaying a different show.

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Oh, no, no, no.

Oh man, I worked at a hotel and convention center a few years ago. I was put on a security detail and had to walk around the event making sure folks weren't fighting and doing stupid stuff.

I witnessed a grown man break down and cry because his mom wouldn't buy him this $700 action figure. He had to have been 26 at the least and he was on the floor rolling around, his mom trying to get him out of there quick.

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Wands and wings! Floaty crowny things!

My girlfriend and I do Cosmo and Wanda from the Fairly Oddparents. Pretty simple cosplays and I was super excited. The girlfriend gets nervous in large crowds so we stayed on the outskirts of the crowd for the most part- a lot of people asked for photos and we had a pretty good time. During the end of the day the girlfriend is getting tired and so we relax in a chair- she sat in my lap since the chair was small- in the lobby of the hotel. Some guy comes up to us and makes it very clear that he is interested in a threesome and propositions us, even though we state multiple times that we are in an exclusive monogamous relationship. After denying his offers multiple times and him not getting the hint, I fake a call from a friend and claim that "oh- our Timmy cosplayer is looking for us- we have to go" and we promptly found a new place to relax on the other side of the con.

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Lol.

My husband and I went to Middle TN Anime Convention and there was a guy cosplaying as Bill Cypher from Gravity Falls. We were dressed as Dipper and Wendy and went to a photo shoot and the Bill Cypher guy was way too into character.

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Yeah, and?

Cosplayed as the Quantum Ranger at Power Morphicon. This random guy wouldn't leave me alone. He's in the background of some of my pictures, just starring at me. I finally got rid of him, after he kept shoving his Astro Morpher in my face, by telling him I had two at home.

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"Sorry, can you not take pictures of me please?"

Cringiest in terms of 'dude, this is just uncomfortable for everyone'?

Last year I cosplayed as mettaton from undertale. it's the end of the day, my feet kill from wearing 7-inch+ heels, our train is nearing, people are clearing out, and as I'm leaning on my friend to adjust my boots, a woman just stops in front of me and starts taking pictures.

I politely say 'sorry, but can you not take pictures of me please?' and she just looks around the phone and then continues to take them. I have a lot of body issues and a lack of confidence so wearing a lycra bodysuit took a lot of lady balls for me, and if those photos surfaced showing me in the awkward and unflattering poses I was in, I'd be upset. No matter what we said to this woman, she just kept. taking. pictures. It resulted in my friend having to stand between us yelling 'SHE DOESN'T WANT A PHOTO' while I adjusted before she got the hint, and even then she still tried to come around the side to sneak more.

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"Proceeded to tell me how long he's been working on the fanfic..."

Went to a con as Zuko from Avatar. An Aang cosplayer approached me excitedly to talk about the show but after 10 minutes, pulled out his phone and wanted me to read their X-rated Avatar fanfic. Proceeded to tell me how long he's been working on the fanfic, and how he was planning out the rest of the story to have 'books' like the show itself. This thing looked to be novel length by this point. I politely excused myself and left.

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"Rhymes with Even Reverse..."

A few years ago, I was cosplaying as a popular cartoon character (Rhymes with Even Reverse) and my mom had just gotten a hotdog or something and sat down to eat. She called me on my phone and told me to come over, which I agreed. She introduced me to some 20-something guy that was cosplaying from the same show as me. (I wouldn't consider it exactly a cosplay since he was wearing the shirt/flip flops of the character.) I was happy though confused, since I had only been gone for like 10 minutes, but I still chatted with said guy for a few minutes. He seemed odd, but I guess nice. I got up since I usually walk around in cosplay for the day, but the guy stopped me. He smiled and asked for a quick photo, and I glanced at my mom, and she gave me the look of "please be nice and do it" and I did it.

When I left the guy proceeded to follow me all around the convention center. For two hours. I tried to be nice the first hour of it, and just chattered and tried my best to be friendly, and after two hours I quickly said "bye" and ran.

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"He was just...so cringey."

Had to stop talking to this super lovely Edward Elric cosplayer (it was her first con she was so sweet) because a guy she was with, who was wearing a clearly-for-children Deadpool costume, would not stop flirting with my two friends. They're dating and were literally stood in front of this guy holding hands and referred to each other as girlfriends. He was just...so cringey.

Had other people who would not stop touching my costume, which okay I wear real chainmail it's interesting, but I was just in line to pay for my drink.

I said, "Where?"

I was dressed as Mermaid Man from Spongebob. I went up to a table to buy a poster, and the guy was like, "Hey, there's Barnacle boy here!" I said "Where?" Because I saw no Barnacle boy at the con yet. He said "...you!" And everyone laughed because they didn't realize I was not barnacle boy and they thought I forgot what my costume was. Screw that guy I'm mermaid man.

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