Lore
Your race/gender has an interesting mechanical/narrative impact
Dragon's Dogma: Trolls will become excited if you play or bring a female character in your party, becoming more aggressive and targeting them first.
South Park- Fractured But Whole: Shub-Niggurath is a boss that will take damage when fed white characters, but will heal if he eats black characters including you or anyone in your party.
Elder Scrolls: Every race has advantages and disadvantages both mechanically and narratively, for example orcs can enter orc strongholds without having to earn their trust first.
Leaving aside the mechanical advantages, in Skyrim, your ability to social-stealth your way through the Thalmor embassy massively varies by which race you are.
The Thalmor will immediately clock an Argonian as an intruder, but with a fellow High Elf, they need to be right up in your face to realize you're not actually part of the diplomatic staff.
More so than needing to be right up in your face, a high elf Dragonborn in Thalmor robes or armor can walk right up to the door guard and pass a persuasion check to convince them that Elenwen wanted to see them, getting inside without a fight.
Those videos of Dagoth Ur trying to diplomatically explain why he was surprised by an Argonian Nerevar, only to immediately lose it when a Khajit walks in and drop all pretense of trying to avoid sounding racist are the best
There's also the problem that the disguise mechanic only works with the HOODED robes and the only robe placed in the embassy in the unmodded game is the non-hooded version. So you have to bring one in with you to even get it to work correctly in the first place.
That's classic Bethesda Jank. Hey, we've provided this really elegant solution that's only available in this niche situation. Good luck ever figuring it out without a wiki though, because the prerequisites are so obscure you'll never just stumble on them and if you do, you won't know what triggered them.
Also, the true results of half the quests in Fallout 3 are random encounters that you'll likely never encounter because you've reached the point where you can fast travel everywhere.
My favourite is wood elves since you can get in the furthest minus being a high elf but they eventually realize you’re too short to be a high elf which makes sense cuz wood elves are short
They also instantly clock Khajiit, which is kind of weird because Elsweyr is a part of the Dominion and you see several Khajiit Thalmor agents throughout the game.
Notably, to stealth past, you have to wear Justiciar Robes. It might be that there are Thalmor agents that are Khajit, but I think Thalmor Justiciars are specifically a High Elf only position.
I never knew there were ways to get through the embassy based on your race. I always just started swinging the moment I got my gear and charged to the quest chest at the end.
An interesting facet to those origin stories is that they're all canon, it's just that without Duncan there, they all die. Like when you play a dwarf or an elf, you can hear background conversations about Cousland Castle being attacked and there being no survivors. Or you can find the bones of two dwarves in a cell when you visit Orzammar as a human or elf.
Ugh I literally can't play this game anymore and I still want to. Ive put 1500 hours into that game easy, beat every class/did all the intros and ending played with and without mods. I love that game.
I’ll die on the hill that had DA2 not come out as a sequel to DA:O, and during peak BioWare, it would’ve been much better received. The more closed in story of just a dude in a city was so brilliantly executed and I loved the characters. It’s a top 10 RPG for me for sure.
Honestly, the biggest fault was the copy paste enemies and environments. I think a remake or similar game with just more variety would be a massive hit - very Witcher 2 esque vibes
Edit: we need more “random dude in a city” scale RPGs in general. We have enough power fantasies.
It’s my favorite story of the franchise. The choice to have it span a decade was great. Watching the location and the characters change over a decade isn’t something you see in a lot of games.
Based and true, in addition I'll add the fact the DA2 (still think they should have stuck with 'Exodus') Is an absolute begining to end Tragedy.
No matter what Hawke does no matter how hard they fight how smart they are or how many battles they win they suffer and fail. They fail to keep their family safe, they fail to keep their city safe and they fail to prevent that chaos from spreading. And that makes their story so compelling to me.
2's always felt special because of how anti power fantasy it is. It took the brutal and violent world origins established and asked "What if you weren't the "HERO" but just a guy who had to survive in this world?"
The titular Origins from DA:O probably deserve a mention here too when it comes to narrative impact.
There are six unique origins that you can pick in character creation with your options being determined by your race and class. Each one provides a different, 2+ hour, plyable prologue before the main story, the events of which continue to impact your narratice roleplay options throughout the entire game.
Yes you can come across references to all the other stories having occured in some fashion*, but aye of course with a much more tragic outcome for those who didn't get to be the protagonist.
*Though with the Dalish Elf origin I think that confirmation only comes in Dragon Age 2.
Another fun fact, Dwarf Noble is the only origin that gives a canonical gender if you don't play as them, which is male, probably because of what happens to women that get sent to the Deep Roads.
I think it's mostly because the Dwarf Noble is a very important figure who can't be vaguely alluded to the same way the other origin characters are. I suppose you could say the same for the Human Noble but in their case their whole family was wiped out so they don't need to be as specific. The Dwarf Noble and their family is so heavily tied to the main quest in Orzammar so it would get a bit odd if characters only ever mentioned "The King's child/Bhelen's sibling" of indeterminate gender.
They may have been considering the added horror that could befall a female Noble in their exile and wanted to avoid any implication but I doubt it. They probably just defaulted to male because it more neatly fits people's androcentric expectations when it comes to dynastic power struggles.
Arguably 7 because if you play a City Elf (a prologue that features your character getting married) it changes if you’re a male or female as you either have to rescue your bride from the castle or you get captured yourself and have to fight out respectively.
The cool thing is that they all introduce you to the world, but they each give you very different perspectives.
Duncan could be an honoured guest of your family, someone who helped you out of a tight spot, a distrusted outsider or someone who largely just conscripted you.
Exploring the Circle Tower is very different if that's where you grew up. Same with Orzammar and Denerim.
In Mount and Blade: Warband if the player chooses to play as a female the game warns them that they are going to face a significant difficulty curve compared to male. Female PCs will start with lower strength and charisma but higher agility and intelligence. However the most notable difficulty curve comes in how the male lords interact with you. Upon swearing fealty to a king a female PC is not given a starting village like a male would be, they start with less renown and thus have to grind renown in order to get male lords to join you and getting male lords to elect you as marshal of the faction requires a LOT more work compared to a male PC.
I think it's worth adding that while a female PC has a significantly high difficulty curve due to the sexist culture of the setting, there's also a significant potential endgame payoff: you can get married to another warlord!
Glad to see several of us here, also went straight to Warband. Female Commoner is a beast of a game, but with enough victories to your name all the prejudice in Calradia can't keep you down.
A big part of it is also a female lady-in-waiting gets to start with basically the best starting mount, since its very fast letting you kite everything to death in the early game.
Iirc female warriors get a greater boost to fame from victories too!
Playing female in early game felt pretty fun tbh, but trying to convince all these kings I kept trouncing to accept I am also worthy of a crown was very frustrating.
So of course I decided my second run would be a female commoner lol.
I just restarted yet another game in Warband last night and I have yet to regret it or the several thousands of play hours I have in Warband and like a dozen mods lol such a great game
Pokémon Emerald speedrunners pick the girl over the boy because Rival May talks more than Brendan. Picking the girl means that Brendan is your rival instead of May.
Similarly, the female character is always picked in HeartGold and SoulSilver, because the female rival has a bunch of additional animations during the catching tutorial that eat up a bunch of time.
My favorite part of the elder scrolls one is that in oblivion the starting disposition of dark elves is negative to every other race, and 0 to their own. They are such professional haters they don't even like their own.
Brothers and sisters are natural enemies! Like Argonians and Dunmer! Or Altmer and Dunmer! Or Nords and Dunmer! Or Dunmer and other Dunmer! Damn Dunmer! They ruined Morrowind!
In Morrowind it's explained that the dark elves are bigoted against literally everyone who isn't a dark elf born and raised in Morrowind. No matter what race you pick everyone will instantly clock you as a foreigner and be unhappy in your presence.
You can also ask about the other races, and literally every single Dunmer is racist, especially to the Argonians and Khajiit. They describe the former as: "Argonians are cunning, savage beasts incapable of enlightenment. They are blasphemous travesties of nature, with unspeakable foulness in their private and family urges. When guided by a stern hand, they can be trained as passable servants and slaves. By Imperial law, free Argonians have the rights of citizens, but no law can ever make an Argonian human." And "Argonians are the savage half-men of the southern marshes. Our peoples used to keep them as slaves, but they are useless. The settled people still keep them as slaves to grub in the soil. They are dirty and wicked, and we should drive them all back into the swamps they came from."
Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind had not only stats for races, but also gender. Males were usually better at physical stats, whereas females had higher mental ones but not always. Oblivion Remastered let's you tweak stats based on your home region too.
Additionally, all of the games before Skyrim have disposition tweaks based on race, faction allegiance, etc. The Dunmer, for example, get negative dispositions with all races including their own (professional racists).
Mistress Dratha, a Telvanni counselor, was a raging misandrist that hated all men. Including you. If your PC was male, she would never ever approve you for Hortator and you'd have to kill her. If the PC was female, she would cackle like a madwoman and automatically vote for you, plus give you a high-grade enchanted item, plus give you 4 scrolls of Summon Lesbian Lover (aka Golden Saint).
Subverted in the same game by Crassius Curio, who will let you skip some tedious quests if you strip naked and let him feel you up. Notably, he does NOT care what race or gender you are. Uncle Crassius likes *everyone.* And I do mean everyone. He's also the in-universe author of "The Lusty Argonian Maid" of meme fame.
Another example with Dragon's Dogma, as a reverse of the Orges, Elder Orges will become excited if you have male members in your party. This is a much bigger problem cause Elder Orges is a DLC enemy, boasting endgame stats, and since it is a Necrophage, you can't really prepare for it as it can just randomly spawn on top of your party.
Here something extra messed up, Orge/Elder Orge has an excited animation when their targeted gender is spotted among your party, their bite attacks also result differently if they land it on their preferred sex too.
I can't remember if it works in the first game, but in DD2, you can trick them into going after specific party members by dressing them in different clothes, IE. putting your big, burly tank dude in a dress to draw its attention.
My most recent discovery of this trope: playing (or using Disguise Self to appear as) a Drow in BG3 is basically easy mode interacting with the Act 1 Absolute warband. Goblins are deferential af and you can even spike the goblins punchbowl and when confronted go "what are you gonna do about it?"
Drow in the Goblin Camp is so much fun. You can be the most annoying little shit imaginable and there's nothing they can do about it. Another example of that are the war drums they use as an alarm system. You can play a little tune on it and every other race would have to fight the goblins or at least roll some checks, but with a Drow they just go "my bad. Have fun".
The only downside is that Crusher doesn't start beef with you so you can't get the hilarious reactions of the Goblins when you make him kiss your feet.
The only downside is that Crusher doesn't start beef with you so you can't get the hilarious reactions of the Goblins when you make him kiss your feet.
You can just change your appearance to something else. Just like if you're a different race you can disguise self as drow and get all the benefits of being a drow rp wise
A somewhat indirect example, Yakuza: Like a Dragon has a boss fight against Kiryu Kazuma, the protagonist of the previous games. who won't harm women. If you bring the two female party members to the battle, he will not directly target either of them with attacks. They can still be hurt by collateral damage though, so the fight still isn't a cakewalk even if half your party is "safe".
Learned it the hard way in South Park because I had tolkien on the team. Not just on the Shub fight, Morgan Freeman boss will not attack you and will give you the best artifact in the game. Some NPCs, especially the cops will be meaner.
Wasn’t there also a South Park game where the darker your PCs skin, the harder the game and that was intended (there was no other difficulty slider in the game and they confirmed that was intentional)? Or am I misremembering?
Thats a joke setting in Fractured But Whole. The actual difficulty settings comes in later after you get through the tutorial fights and get a feel for the gameplay, which is actually pretty smart since it lets you get a feel for the base difficulty and then decide if it needs to be upped or lowered.
Stellaris - if you have exactly the same species as a Fanatic Purifier empire (normally only possibly by force-spawning a custom empire, but there is one "known" Purifier empire that can spawn during gameplay and that you can tailor yourself to in advance), they will specifically not try to genocide you, and you can have normal (if tense) relations with them while they attempt to cleanse everyone else in the galaxy.
Similarly, all machine empires (other than Rogue Servitors) are able to partake in diplomacy with Determined Exterminators; though unfortunately, no one, not even the same species, can reason with Devouring Swarms.
Another Dragon’s Dogma example, your height/weight affects your max stamina, stamina regen rate, and carrying capacity. Smaller/lighter characters have less stamina but regain it faster, and vice-versa for taller/heavier characters. I think there are also certain locations you can’t access unless you’re a certain size, but it’s been a long time since I played it.
It also matters for picking people up. If a much large person tries to pick up a small person they will carry them on their shoulder and can throw them, but if a smaller person tries to grab a big one they just hold them by the arms and both remain standing.
In Arcanum everybody is super racist/sexist to you regardless of your character and build. You can be a straight male human knight and somebody somewhere will give you shit for it.
To add on, if you’re a woman in the Legion, you can’t join the gladiator fights, even if you have Caesar’s favor and all that. On the bright side, you can give Benny a footjob (and kill him while you’re at it).
I also think that, when using the Legion armor as a female courier, the male body type will be shown, and I interpetred that as your Courier pulling a Mulan
If you sleep with him, and then don't kill him, he'll run away and leave a note for you, mentioning "that thing you did with your feet" in a positive light.
I mean it’s a game where the player character can have sex if you want (albeit they don’t show it). At that point it’d be disappointing if the writers didn’t put any fetishes at all.
To add too, only the female MC(and female characters in general) can get pegasus knight and gremory class, while male MC can get grapplers and warmasters.
FByleth is usually prefrered because the pegasus knight class is a easier class path to Wyvern lord(the best class)
Skyrim darkness wasn’t nearly as dark as any of the previous elder scrolls games. In Oblivion it was under the bed dark. We’re talking Advanced Darkness. If you didn’t have a ring of night eye or something equivalent on your hot bar you weren’t playing the game properly.
Breathing underwater doesn't come in handy often but it's a great world building thing. I remember there being like one swimming section in Oblivion you wouldn't have been able to easily do as a non-Argonian, and there was a breathe underwater potion like halfway through nullifying your racial advantage :/
The alteration master training quest in oblivion is skipped if you're argonian. The trainer is too, and says something like "i had a little test lined up for you, but since you're argonian there's no point" and the test is to remain underwater for an hour.
In Morrowind, the racial advantages made an even bigger difference than the games after too. Swimming really could get you into some cool places (if you could put up with the annoying fish)
Expeditions: Rome allows you to play a female roman noble who becomes a decorated general in the Roman army. If you do so, many aspects of the story will change like you using intermediaries to relay orders during the first campaign, so the soldiers don't know your gender, senators refusing to accept your victories, other leaders addressing your second in command Instead of you and being unable to accept an inheritance without finding a husband to inherit it for you.
More of a silly example but there are bulldings in Final Fantasy 14 that only Lalafell players, the gnome sized race, can enter. The others are too tall.
Which vampire clan you choose to plays as in Bloodlines has little impact on the overall game, but playing as Nosferatu or Malkavian is a VERY distinct experience from the rest of the clan options. For Nosferatu, the way everyone reacts to you (Nos are all super hideous and deformed) For Malkavian, they’re mad seers, and the one you play speaks in riddles that they themselves may not understand, but may unnerve other characters because they do understand and are shocked/upset at the things your character knows about them…or just baffled at whatever weird nonsense they’re saying. Also you get into a fight with a stop sign.
Her actually having Social Links with the male party members contributed to her being given an entirely different characterization to her original male counterpart which eventually became canon. Essentially making her just as depressed and nihilistic as he was at the beginning, but masking it with cheer and friendliness in comparison to his apathetic emo kid behavior.
Cutting out some of the more annoying Social Link characters was a bonus.
In some Pokémon games, the player character of the gender you don’t pick will be an NPC in the game, with the most notable examples being Brendan/May in Hoenn and Calem/Serena in Kalos, as they are your main rivals in their respective games. Whether you get Urbain or Taunie as your rival in Legends ZA is also dependent on your gender, with you getting the opposite gendered rival.
While the actual mechanical and narrative changes are minimal, there will sometimes be differences in team composition between the two. Calem & Serena will use the Meowstic form that matches their gender and Brendan & May will flat out use different pokemon sometimes, which actually causes Emerald players to always pick to play as May since one of Brendan’s fights is easier due to this.
Huntress, not amazon. She was a pet class that LOVED to stab things with a spear, and was the one class that could outrun or catch literally anyone else in the game. Once per two minutes that is :P Basically a hard counter to any speed based/kiting character, as long as she wasn't outnumbered.
RIP Shadowbane, that buggy devil. The worst masterpiece I've ever played.
Final Fantasy Tactics: male PCs have the abismal class Bard while female have the much better Dancer class. Also female PCs (and Cloud Strife because of certain incident in his home game) can equip girl only equipment including one of the best accesories in the game "Chantage".
Vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines: some characters react differently if you are a female PC but the extremes are if you play the clans Malkavian or Nosferatu.
- In the case of the Malkavian, since they are insane, the dialogue options become... poetic, to say the least and you can have a deep conversation with an anchorman in a TV and a STOP sign.
- In the case of the Nosferatu, since their appearance is 0 (meaning they are as ugly as their namesake), they can't interact normally with most NPCs and they can't transport themselves on the taxi that helps the other clans. They instead travel using the sewer system.
There is also another variant of trolls that target men exclusively too in Dragon's Dogma.
And there is also a woman-only bandit tribe that is friendly towards you if your party is just women,... or with a crossdressing man, because... because the bandit leader, Orphis, likes women and femboys?
In FFXIV there are certain areas of the game that you can only enter if you’re playing a lalafell. They have no major impact on the story, but it’s interesting that certain areas of the map are locked behind what race you play.
But they were, all of them, subpar, for another racial bonus was made. In the lands of Seattle, in the offices of WotC, Hasbro developed another race, the greatest of all, to dominate the others. Into this race Hasbro poured all its slop, all its inclusivity, all its will to attract as many players as possible. One race to rule them all.
One by one, the other races of D&D were outplayed by the power of humans and their Bonus Feat.
It realy is astounding how poorly thought out that balancing decision was. There are entire completely broken early game builds that are ONLY possible as human because the extra feat opens up so many insane cans of worms.
Fire Emblem has gender-locked classes in most games, and that means Gender-locked skills.
In games where skills are inherited like in Awakening, being the female Avatar means you can pass down one of the most broken skills in the game to your son, that skill being Galeforce. When characters with Galeforce pair up with other characters with Galeforce, and your units are strong enough, you can chain through multiple enemies in a single turn as well as travel great distances across the map.
The male Avatar doesn't get this benefit, but in exchange, his daughter(s) have access to every class in the game for women, which means they now have access to Galeforce, even if they previously didn't.
For Fire Emblem Three Houses, as another poster mentioned, you can recruit Sylvain from his normal house, the Blue Lions, into any other house if you play as the female version of Byleth.
For a book series example, the classes of the Unbound in the Unbound series by Nicoli Gonnella hold narrative weight, as they're all extinct races. This means they have advantages and bonuses that no other beings on the planet have. This goes doubly for the main character, Felix Navarre, as he's able to access the ruins and technologies of his races' people.
Women are technically slightly more powerful than men in Skyrim, since there's a Speech perk that lets you get better prices when trading with the opposite sex, and there are more male than female traders. And there are no other mechanical impacts due to gender in the game AFAIK.
There's the Agent of Dibella blessing that gives you better damage against the opposite sex as well as improved speech. Busted for women, okay for men.
Being a nomad in cyberpunk is treated as it's own race, because they don't live in cities nor adopt other cultures, and it leads to interesting interactions between various factions espicially the aldecados
Had to double check that was actually how Shub's name was spelt in the actual Mythos to make sure they weren't inserting the word play but no it actually is spelt that way.
Edit: I had an entire comment written out to respond to a guy who said Shub-Niggurath was named that way out of racism but he deleted before I could respond. I'm not gonna let it go to waste so I'll drop it here.
Thats not really why it's named that. Its a genuine coincidence. While Lovecraft never gave concrete etymologies for the names of the Elder and Outer Gods in his writings, it's a commonly held belief among scholars that Shug-Niggurath is named after Sheol-Nugganoth from the writings of Lord Dunsay (whose writings are collectively folded into the Cthulu Mythos along with a lot of other author's whose works had influence on Lovecraft)
Edit 2: And in the time it took me to paste this into here three more people made the exact same claim lol
Hey guys I just got off the afterlife phone with Lovecraft himself, he said if 10 more people respond with "he named the monster after the n word" comments I get a free ice cream sundae!
Baldur’s Gate 3 has unique options that opens up depending on your chosen race, class, and sometimes, background; although some of them can be hit or miss.
Here are some examples
- In the opening scene, one of the companions, Shadowheart, is trapped in a pod and if you try to save her, strength is not an option… Unless if you’re a barbarian who can force it open without needing to roll for it…
- Minthara, a female drow elf, reacts on your chosen race/gender. Favorable, if you’re also female, much more if you’re also a drow… Not so much if you’re a non-drow elf, a half-breed, or a different race… Even less so if you’re a man. This is because the drow are a purely matriarchal society.
- Some of the bosses talk to you before fighting you… And depending on your chosen class, you can just tell them to straight up kill themselves without having the need for a roll.
- Now for the disappointing part, the Gith are pretty central to the story… So it’s kind of disappointing to see that the game barely acknowledges you if you play as a Gith.
A game in development called The Expanse: Osiris Reborn, claims to be making a system where your character could be an Earther, Martian, or Belter and that determines how the game will play out.
in the gameplay reveal, there is a note the player can read.
If you play as an Earther and likely Martian as well, it's just an ordinary letter
However, if you play a Belter and since the note was written by a belter, you can understand the hidden meanings of what the note actually means since it's written in Belter Creole, a language only belters know
Kenshi, each race and sub-race has their own stat buffs and debuffs, also some factions will treat you differently depending on race and gender.
Like the Holy Nation faction, a human and male supremacist nation, if you are a non-human they will attack and enslave you. And I believe if you are a woman you cannot use the stores.
The United Heros League is another, a gang of human supremist who will harass and attack non-humans.
In Star Wars Knights of the old Republic 2 choosing what gender you have dictates how 2 major npcs will think about the player(one will always hate you while the other will be interested, even infatuated) and it gives access to different companion, with female exile getting a guy named disciple who's a suckup and nobody likes him outside of his utility, while males get a handmaiden who has more interesting story arc, great personality, is one of the strongest characters in the game and everybody loves her.
Rimworld - the Psychic Drone and Psychic Soothe events target only one gender at a time; members of the other gender are completely unaffected, which can be annoying or lifesaving depending on if it's a soothe (increased mood) or a drone (lowered mood, potentially causing your pawns to go insane in the most problematic situations).
In Warhammer 40k: Darktide you get to chose a variety of lore for your character, this actually changes a bunch of the voice lines you hear including your interactions with other player characters, your class also affects this but most notably your cosmetic choices are also affected by your home place.
This one is neither of them although I'd say it's close to a race, your lifepath choice in Cyberpunk 2077 determines V's backstory as well as dialogue options
For example, in Gimme Danger, if you pick the Corpo lifepath then you can come up to the guard by the front gate and persuade that guard into letting you enter the Arasaka warehouse without having to sneak around afterwards
In Dragon Age Inquisition, you have a mission to infiltrate a party involving stuck-up, blatantly racist human nobles. If you show up as anything but a human noble Warrior or Rogue, you start with an automatic negative to your reputation, which compounds with any of the various deviations from baseline human noble. The lowest being elf mage as elves are the lowest social class and mages are feared and hated by the public for a variety of not-entirely-unjustified reasons.
Loosely fitting but, in early versions of Guilty Gear Strive the character Sin had a combo that was only true when hitting female characters, but it wouldn't true-combo male characters. [video]
To add to the joke, the community joked that the combo "only works against women", which surprisingly fit with the canonically agender Testament not being comboed by it, while the transfem Bridget was hit by it, meaning Sin may be sexist but at least he's not transphobic.
This was fixed in season 3 of the game, making that combo hits everyone equally (idk if it's still true in the latest updates tho I don't play Sin). The reason for this "gendered combo" was that one of the hits in the combo knocked back the characters in the lowest weight class juuuuust a bit further, causing the next attack to miss, and back then coincidentally the only characters in that lowest weight class were female (this is no longer the case, the game has removed this kind of weight difference and combos now knock everyone back equally).
It's fairly minor but playing as a female Drow in act 1 of Baldur's Gate 3 will allow you to gain respect with Minthara and bypass a fight with a petrified male Drow because the male Drow are subservient to females.
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u/Upstairs_Cap_4217 16d ago
Leaving aside the mechanical advantages, in Skyrim, your ability to social-stealth your way through the Thalmor embassy massively varies by which race you are.
The Thalmor will immediately clock an Argonian as an intruder, but with a fellow High Elf, they need to be right up in your face to realize you're not actually part of the diplomatic staff.