I decided to go to Otakon 2023 at almost the last minute, and the main reason I decided to go was to spend time with my friends. As such, my main motivation in picking my costumes was to match my friends. Lady Terentia, Stevie, Lauren, and Beth had a Genshin Impact group planned, and although I had never played Genshin Impact (although I did end up downloading it, I just can't seem to get into it), I really wanted to be part of the group, so I asked Teren who she would pick for me, especially in relation to whom she was cosplaying (Keqing). She named a few characters, but got most excited when she thought about Beidou, who wears red (see: Sailor Mars), is a pirate (my father thinks he's a pirate...I'd say it's a long story but no, that's about all there is to it), and she loves to drink (the less said, the better.) Once I saw what a killer sword she had, I was sold.

Luckily Genshin Impact is SUPER popular, so all of the mass-producing cosplay sites have Beidou in stock. I did a little extra searching, as I definitely wanted boots rather than bootcovers, and the only site I found that had that was ProCosplayShop; the hairsticks, dress, boots, and sword all come from them. The costume also came with an earring, but I couldn't tell that from the description, so I bought another one from a seller on eBay named shih89 (and it wasn't a waste, because the original earring was clip-on, and the one I bought was for pierced ears, which I have.) It also came with Beidou's Vision, but Lady Terentia had bought herself a Vision that lit up, and light up is always preferable, so I bought the same one from dokidokicosplay. I bought the biggest size ProCosplayShop has, which mainly fits, but doesn't quite sit right in the back, so it doesn't quite look 100% right in photos taken from behind. And the eyepatch it came with was WAY too big, so I tried resizing it with not so great results; thankfully Beth made me a new one from scratch that was WAY better.

Luckily, I already had a flask. ;-)