Procrastinating Gala Bitches about Torchwood part 2

[galadriel1010]

Gwen
It couldn't really start with anyone else, could it? Poor lass. It's no secret that I don't like Gwen, but I try to like her, I really do. It just doesn't work. I think Gwen is so disliked for three reasons:

Audience surrogate
Gwen was our introduction to Torchwood. She's the one we met and identified with, because she was like us and having her eyes opened to a whole new world. Unfortunately, the pushy, slightly clumsy and clueless companion is not who we want to be. Really, did anyone want to be the girl on the TARDIS asking "what does that mean, Doctor?" every episode? Of course not. They wanted to be the Brigadier, or Jamie, or Jack. Recent female companions in Doctor Who have managed to buck the trend and be both the information dump receptacle, and bring something of their own as well. Gwen and, I think, Rose never really managed this. They have nothing to offer other than their enthusiasm and curiosity. And for the character we identify with to be that one... sorry dears, but I alwys wanted to be Jack, Mickey or Ianto, who'd been around and knew what they were doing. And didn't need to be rescued all the time.

On top of this, she is a very good character and a very fleshed out character, but we judge her as we would judge ourselves. If you can identify with her and say 'that could be me', then you're going to look on her more harshly if she does something that you don't want to consider doing yourself. It starts badly, to be honest. Jack's just come back to life and seen his friend shoot herself in the head because she's a mass murderer who got found out, and the first thing Gwen says is "I remember". That's nice, dear. Here, I'll help you forget again. And the lying to Rhys and nosiness that started in the very first episode. Couldn't investigating Torchwood have waited until she wasn't concussed and didn't have to lie to him about where she was going?

So the show set us up with this character who we were supposed to identify with who is shown to be fairly lacking in empathy, a liar who seems to have done it before, nosy and meddlesome, and not particularly good at it. I'll start shopping around for a better character to identify with, thanks.

Main character
She's the main character. The show was supposed to be all about her, but the BBC wouldn't let RTD do it until he proposed this new idea with John Barrowman in it. Gwen remained the main character, but shared the limelight with Jack. And, well, Jack's just prettier. And we already identified with him and, by and large, were at least a little bit in love with him. She took screentime away from Jack, who we were watching for.
And then Ianto came along, and he's prettier than her as well, and he and Jack make such a very lovely picture. And Gwen kept stealing time when they could be kissing. Literally, in Adrift. Yeah, I know Torchwood wasn't about boys kissing but... Meh

Purpose, or lack thereof
She has no specialist skills. She put together the profile on Carys in Day One, which could have been a crowning moment, but it was Tosh who eventually got the information they needed to catch her and Owen who knew what it meant. What is Gwen's purpose there? Extra field agent (who had to be taught to wield a gun and couldn't do any of the research), conscience (who seemed to be only casually acquainted with her own), researcher (who isn't as good at it as either the archivist or the technician)... or is she just there to challenge the others and poke her nose in where it's not welcome? Yeah, they needed someone to do that, but it's a pretty shitty job description, and could have done with a more sensitive touch most of the time.

Tl;dr: We identified with her in the wrong way and couldn't see the point of her.

Jack
If you're not at least a little bit in love with Jack, I think you've misplaced your heart. For starters, that smile could turn the butchest lesbian (but would be more successful if he didn't know it) is a work of art on a par with the Aston Martin DB9 (I'm not the only one who'd marry that car, right?), and then he's so tortured and hurting and vulnerable and still a hero. He's everyone's Prince Charming.
But he's seen as promiscuous and slutty, which is a reather horrible case of slut shaming, as he's spread his sexual exploits out over more than a century anyway, and the only character he's slept with in recent years is Ianto. (If he'd slept with anyone else we'd know about it; Torchwood was not subtle about that. There would have been a hideous blow-up in the Hub). But interviews tell us that he sleeps around, and who are we to argue with them?
Usually first in line, actually.
Jack has allowed a lot more people to be sex positive, but there's still a layer of prudish slut shaming which seems to deny him emotions and connections.

But he's still our leader, and we will still follow him anywhere. We admire him for making the hard decisions and keeping us safe. He's also the last surviving WW1 veteran by now, and the sacrifices he's made to keep us safe are worthy of our respect.
(Yes, I know he didn't actually fight in the war. But he doesn't actually protect us from aliens either)

Ianto
He looks good in a suit. He's also adorably protectable, but will never actually need our protection, very damaged and stil going. He survived things no one should have to, and he gets up and goes on again.
He's also a fantastic role model for bisexual youth, taps into our love of the secret service image that creates our love for James Bond, and gets the guy we all want.
Of course we identify with him, he gets to shag Jack Harkness.
And the only mistake he makes is trying to save the woman he loves whilst everyone around him ignores that he exists, not long after he survived the Battle of Canary Wharf. It's sort of hard not to hate Jack for letting him down.
Even in End of Days, when Lisa appears to him to get him to open the Rift, she doesn't tell him that he'll get her back. She tells him that people will die if he doesn't do it - no promise of her return, just an instruction to keep people safe.
Did I mention that he's pretty?

Tosh
Poor Tosh. It's sort of hard to identify with her. She's quiet and closed off, intelligent beyond most of our capacities for understanding (unless you believe the Torchwood Archives' estimate of her IQ, in which case she wouldn't get into MENSA. As flattering as that statistic was for me, there is no way I'm brighter than Tosh. I am a glowworm to her lava lamp. Or something).
Very good at her job, totally ignored. And pining over Owen, which makes you wonder if she has any sense at all.
But it's hard to identify with computers, and she never got to be much more than an extension of Mainframe.

Owen
Rapist, bully, arrogant arse. At least we can't say that he went from bad to worse, because he couldn't get much worse. Out of all the team, owen is the one I really, really wouldn't want to work with, because I'd just be waiting for him to turn on me. Possibly this is why people like him more than Gwen, because they recognise the bully in him and don't want to get on his bad side.

So there is Galadriel's theories on attatchement to the Torchwood characters. Agree, disagree, seen something I missed? I was trying to work out why so many people dislike Gwen, sort of looking for validity in my dislike, and ended up looking at all of them.

Comments

[beesandbrews.livejournal.com]

The biggest problem I have with Gwen is she's a victim of Tell not Show. The writers kept saying Gwen, she's awesome. But they rarely showed me examples of her awesomeness. As a cop she lost control of the situation and subsequetly is knocked out in a bar fight. She didn't maintain a perimeter as instructed, she went off her beat stranding her partner, but evidently could serve coffee with the best of them. Her ambition is to work the desk, not be a detective. This isn't someone that comes off as having a burning desire to bust crime or serve the community. Police work is just something to do to collect a check.

As a domestic partner she's depicted as someone who lies casually without reason just because she can, and despite loud protestations of love and butterflies, is clearly less invested in her relationship than Rhys. It's made pretty clear that if Jack were to crook his finger then Gwen would drop Rhys like an empty sack of crisps, yet this is held up as the example of domestic normality the others are supposed to aspire to. Um...

As a member of Torchwood she bucks authority, can't seem to grasp the larger picture that her actions have consequences that impact other people - everyone from Carys to her parents when she turns into Bridezilla, nearly gets herself killed on a semi-regular basis because she doesn't understand that what they do and who they work with are dangerous - John Hart, Suzie.

Despite the fact she has little background for anything she does her skills appear out of nowhere. Which isn't to say that Torchwood didn't train her or she isn't bright enough to learn, but watching Gwen suddenly have the ability to input the protocols to use the rift manipulator when she's never shown a casual interest just jars.

Compare that to Owen your second least liked character. Owen is out of the box an ass. He's rude, crude, possibly dangerous, amoral and not a nice guy. He's also a damn good doctor and evidently has secondary interests in botany and other areas of science. Over the progression of the series we find that Owen is a damaged individual who has put up a lot of walls to protect himself. He's not nearly the ass we thought he was. He may have gone off the rails for a time, but he slowly pulls himself back until by the time of his presumed actual death, he's redeemed.

And that is why Owen is more popular than Gwen. His character goes through an arc of dicernable growth and change. Whereas, Gwen still seems very much the same person by the end of the second series as she was in the first. She's still putting herself first, she's still lying, she still doesn't get that her actions have consequences that hurt other people.

Tosh got a raw deal. I don't disagree with what you say about Ianto. I think that Jack is more talk then show.

[fiwen1010.livejournal.com]

I agree completely on Gwen. She never quite matched up to what we were told about her, so she never met our expectations. There are huge gaps in the story where they could have shown her learning, but she just keeps making mistakes and never seems to learn from them.
If she hadn't learnt not to push Jack by Adrift, she wasn't going to learn from that.

Owen definitely does grow and develop as a character, but I still can't see him as much more than a bully until he dies. It's the ultimate comeuppance, really. He dies and has his revelations, and then he has to live with them.

Jack is definitely more talk than action personally. Maybe he once was all he makes himself out to be, but it's a smokescreen to stop people getting close to him now, and who can blame him?

[thebuttonontop.livejournal.com]

i have been realizing more and more lately how much i love every single character in this show. to be honest... even gwen. she may add the least to it.. but honestly, even if the only thing she brings to the show is the ability to be the least liked, someone has to be. and she's the reason that Rhys is on the show, and i adore rhys. :)

and when it comes to owen..i honestly really love owen. i believe that even his being a complete prat makes him loveable. i hate him sometimes when he's being mean to tosh... but i think... its all justified in the end. first series, he was hard to like. second.. he was hard to dislike. i think.

tosh..lovely tosh. i actually identify with her a bit. i've always been a bit ignored and invisible.

[fiwen1010.livejournal.com]

Rhys is an infinitely more awesome character than Gwen. He experiences more character growth as well, which is interesting. it implies that the writers either thought that Gwen was perfect and didn't need to grow, or wanted to make her out to be narrow minded and incapable of change. ostly I pity her, because she can't see what she's like.

Owen's one of those who lashes out because he's hurting and scared. It doesn't make what he's doing right, at all, but it does make it understandable and very believable.

[welsh-scotsman.livejournal.com]

I love your intellectual ramblings; they're fascinating and I think you have valid point for all of them. I'll try not to go too much into Gwen or I'll end up ranting but for me, I find it really hard to like her and I have tried so hard but then I think you shouldn't have to try to like a character; you either instantly should or instantly shouldn't. It was the end of Countrycide that did it for me; if they'd have put that monolofue in at any other time, maybe after Rhys had 'died' I would have understood but to put it in right after one of your colleagues has nearly been slaughtered and the other chased through the woods by a mad man just screams selifsh!!!

I think it's also human nature to like an underdog and to like people who aren't perfect and whilst yes, she has 'faults', they're not the same as the others and she has the perfect life now; the loving two parent family, the locing husband and now a baby but I'm not going near c of e with a bargepole!

Ianto, I think appeals to everyonem specifically, or maybe only the women because he's the youngest and he does have the air of vulnerability about him and things like cyberwoman and countrycide and from out of the rain show that but he can and will also sort himself out and is more than capable of defending himself; meat, captain jack harkness being examples. Also, out of all of them, especially in s1, he was an outsider and I think a lot of people have felt like that in their lives; that they've felt ignored or taken for granted and that shows. Also, he has emotional complexity which Gwen doesn't have. Gwen is what you see is what you get; she feels happy you knopw sort of thing whereas with ianto you never know. in the beginning of s1 he seems fine and then you find out he's hiding his girlfriend in the basemant and you start to wonder just how stable is this guy? what is he really like? he also gives so little of his private life away and his realtionship with jack that he remains an enigma and humans are always attracted to puzzles.

Owen, in my opinon was the one who developed most from the beginning od s1 to the end of s2 and I think this gave him also emotinoal complexity. He wasn't just a bastard all the time and when you find out about Katie you can sort of see where he's coming from.Yes what he did with the pheromone spray was wrong but in retrospect you can kind of see where he was coming from. (im trying to explain without stepping on anyone's toes here! i think i'll just move on:P) yes, he was portrayed as a bit of an arrogant idiot, but it was balanced out with moments of kindness and lovel ike in ghost machine where he wanted to get justice for lizzie and in countrycide when he was stitching up gwen and in out of time with diane and then you see him vulnerable when she leaves and it almost endear him and gives him that vulnerability that he didn;t previously have and it's that same vulnerability that ianto and to a certain extent, jack have that allows us to identify with owen. you see again in end of days how absolutely devastated he is when jack is dead and comes back and forgives him and you get a real sense of development with him and then into s2 where he's a lot calmer as if he's come to peace with himself and then the whole dead but alive story arc gives him even more depth and then his interactions with tosh get a whole new meaning and you (or at least i) get the impression that he wanted to try a relationship with tosh but was too scared of losing her and getting hurt and then he died and thought it was out of pity that she wanted him. Out of all of them, Owen followed by Ianto were the ones who changed and developed most from the two seris whereas Gwen really didn't.

I' m going to run out of characters so I;ll carry on in a part two:P

[fiwen1010.livejournal.com]

Gwen, yes, hopelessly selfish. And she never learns, as you pointed out. She's been shown this shiny new universe, and all she seems to want to know is where her place in it is. She can't see the big picture.

I think Ianto is so popular partly because we're such a fanfiction driven fandom, and he's such a gift to fanfiction. We know next to nothing about him, so we can make him exactly what we want, whereas we know pretty much everything about Gwen. It's awesome.
And yeah, he's adorable and I just want to wrap him in cotton wool and feed him.

Owen, I think, totally lost his way after Katie. He probably didn't think that using the pheremone spray was wrong. Hell, he might even have been able to justify watching his coleague making out with a prisoner and recording it. But that's somehow scarier than the idea that he knew that what he was doing was wrong and did it anyway.
I don't like it when Tosh collects video of Jack and Ianto without their knowledge, either. It's beyond intrusive. Might actually fanficrants that...

Owen does develop as a character, which is good, but it would be more reassuring if he was shown to regret his actions in the past, rather than have them just swept under the carpet and ignored. But then, there's very little in the way of reflection in Torchwood.

[silver_sun]

Owen does develop as a character, which is good, but it would be more reassuring if he was shown to regret his actions in the past, rather than have them just swept under the carpet and ignored. But then, there's very little in the way of reflection in Torchwood.

Ghost Machine, given what Owen saw with it was such a wasted chance at having Owen consider his actions re the pheromone spray.

[welsh-scotsman.livejournal.com]

Your point about not liking fics where tosh collects clips of Jack and Ianto's 'exploits'. Can I just say I completwely agree with you and you should do a rant about it. i dont know why people sometimes write those things. it's just wrong and an abuse of trust. yes, maybe jack or ianto should have more sense than to do it under the cctv and they probably should delete it after, but that's no excuse for people to write tosh purposefully trawling through the cctv and then keeping it for her own personal archives. i don't know where they get that idea from anyway. there's nothing in canon to support that notion. people always write it as either jack and ianto don't know or they don't mind and ever actively encourage it, and i don't see either jack or ianto condoning such intrusiveness into their private life. they keep their relationship subtle when they're at work so why would they allow a colleague to tap it after hours? whilst jack may seem all gun ho about his exploits, i don't think he would allow it, and he doesn't say much about his sex life i s2 which might show how much he values ianto and won't break that trust. as for ianto, i canr see him wanting it at all. he's a private person so why would he want a private act broadcast? besides, he's probably the one who deletes the cctv as jack would probably forget=D

[fiwen1010.livejournal.com]

I did a ffrants post about it. The whole thing grates on me so badly, because she's possiby more private than Ianto is. She would never even think about it.

[welsh-scotsman.livejournal.com]

Tosh, I felt, had the potential to be brilliant if she got a different storyline other than the evil alien lover. It does seem that whilst Ianto had integrated into the team, Tosh had either shifted back out into the outer border of the team or didn't interact as much as from out of the rain shows, ianto, gwen and owen have gone out together and it makes you wonder why tosh didn't go with them. probably beucase it would have ruined the scipt and you'd have too many people but it does make you wonder. It is also interesting that Ianto/Tosh friendship is a huge fanon thing but when you look at the show, there's really not that much interaction.; There's Countrycide when they didnt really have much choice and that's about it.

Jack...well Jack's Jack. He becomes a lot happier in s2 (probably becuase of Ianto) but there is still that same sort of divide between him and the rest of the team. Probably becuase he's from 3000 years in the future and he;'s immortal. He has great fanon potential in the whole immortal angst thing and the history he could have endured and again, in a way, he's an enigma but not in the same way that Ianto is. I think, even though Ianto;s human and only 25ish, he serves as a much better and more effective enigma than Jack maybe because of the age thing and the vulnerbilty I've mentioned before. Jack also, whilst it can percevied he is vulnerable to an extent, his physical build and demeanour make it less believable although you do feel for him at the end of the series that never happended and s2.

[fiwen1010.livejournal.com]

I think Tosh is a victim of Gwen's alpha-female thing, which is a recognised phenomenon among powerful women. They see other women as more of a threat than men, so they push them out of the way and cosy up to the men. Of course, the fact that they've managed to convey this is more likely to be an accident arising from TV's unwillingness to have really good female characters.
Tosh could have been so awesome, but she was just forgotten. At least she got a good death.

I have so many levels of 'I want to look after you' for Jack, it's insane. He's such a vulnerable character, but fairly unapproachable. It takes courage and understanding to get there, so I would never have believed Jack/Gwen. She's just totally wrong for him. Ianto and Jack, they just fit. But Jack is so very alien that you can't really get close to understanding him.

[silver_sun]

Gwen.
I think the biggest problem comes down to the fact that she's a normal flawed human being who we're constantly told in the show to believe is the best person ever. And generally people don't like to be told what to think – so the more we're told she wonderful the more people rebel against it.

I don't mind her as a character, I wouldn't say she's my favourite, and often I find it hard to understand where she's coming from unless I really think about it.

Gwen appears through much of the series to have no accountability for her actions seemingly based on the fact that she's Gwen and therefore perfect as she is. Which is a shame, action, reaction and character development is good for all characters, especially main ones who get a lot of screen time.

So the thing that a lot of the time stopped when Gwen being as awesome as she could have been was the writers telling us that she was without ever giving her something on screen that showed it.


Owen.
Having read interviews at the time with the show runners saying that it - the pheromone spray - wasn't supposed to be seen like that, it was supposed to be seen kind of like the impulse and lynx bodyspray adverts where girl/guy sprays themselves and then becomes irresistible to everyone, I have admit I've put a lot of it down to very poor writing. I mean seriously if they wanted it to seem like the advert have a shot of him putting on the spray and then going out to a club and picking somebody up – yes it's still decidely skeevy, but it doesn't carry the same inference as him using the spray to change somebody's mind after they've said no, as there is the possibility that they could have said even if he hadn't been wearing the spray.

Oddly I get more where Owen is coming from, his background making him who he is, than any of the other characters. His anger at the world that he feels owes him something, his relationship with Jack (Looking to Jack as almost some kind of father figure (the father he didn't have) and hurt and anger when Jack can't live up to what Owen's built him up to be in his mind by the end of series one.). His attitude towards women, which seems to veer between hopeless adoration and seeming to see than as little more than sex objects, being perhaps in part due to his relationship with his mother. Arrogance born of self reliance from too young an age, and fear of allowing himself to rely on others.

None of this excuses his behaviour which is often objectionable, but it gives it some kind of context.

Perhaps the oddest thing to me was that almost nobody seemed to see Owen's family issues, his mother and his background seemed painfully obvious to me even in series one, long before we got the reveal of this stuff in S2. I guess maybe that's because in Owen past I can see some of my own.

[coldwater1010.livejournal.com]

I think the show was kind of dumb with whole Owen spray thing.I don't really get how it never even occurred to them that the Owen spray scenes as played out might be considered non-con.I suspect they were being someone disingenuous to be honest. But even without that I found Owen pretty unpleasant especially in his behaviour towards Tosh in s1. He was always so particularly nasty towards her for no other reason than the fact that she had the poor taste to find him attractive. And her just taking it when she didn't even deserve it just made her seem pathetic and since I liked her I started to feel resentful on her behalf. I agree he had the most growth on the show though. At least in s2 I could somewhat understand why people might want to still hang around him despite his bouts of arsiness.

Gwen I can take or leave. She always worked better for me as part of the ensemble than as a focal character and I always found her a bit too sanctimonious and hypocritical for someone who wasn't above crossing the line when it suited her ends. But I tend to think she means well most of the time, but the show just tried to hard with her and I think it kind of backfired.Plus in order to keep her our point of reference character they often ended up making her seem kind of dumb.

Jack. I go back and forth with him. I think I should find him far more fascinating than I actually do on the show. He has all the hallmarks of a fascinating, complex character and yet more and more I just find him kind of ugh. I don't think it's really his fault though. I just find the writing for him increasingly problematic.

[fiwen1010.livejournal.com]

Torchwood would have worked better as more of a team show with a more even distribution of points of view. Then Gwen wouldn't have been the one asking the questions all the time, and she wouldn't have come across as being in permanent posession of the idiot ball, and a pushy, hypocritical cow at the same tiem. Alternatively, they could have pushed her juuust a little bit further and made her into a super awesome uberbitch, and the show would have taken an awesome turn for the darker.

Jack is afflicted with that problem that faces most of the Torchwood characters - there's no character bible, so everyone interprets them differently. And I don't think anyone really knows how to deal with Jack anyway. We seem to see him as a much more rounded character than he actually is.

[fiwen1010.livejournal.com]

Yes, definitely agree with you on Gwen. The writers could have done with heeding their teachers: "You make your statement, then you prove it. A statement without proof is half a mark at best."

I always assumed that there was a reason that Owen was a jerk, but I couldn't work out what it was. I actually assumed that he was constantly hungover for a while.

And the pheremone spray... yeah, they could have done it so much better. I love the Lynx adverts for their idiocy. Especially the one where he sprays himself and is suddenly just as lanky and gawky, but in his underwear.

[kamiandcat.livejournal.com]

I think in Gwen's case less would have been more. They simply wanted to much from her and she can't be the person who cheats on Rhys with Owen knowing that Tosh fancies Owen and the "heart" of the team at the same time. That's impossible.

I also think this is why I like Owen a lot more then I like her, even though he drives me mad the way he threads Tosh all the time as well. Owen never "pretents" to be nice and heartly and there isn't someone screaming in my ear how awesome Owen is and how I HAVE to love him all the time. I think they made a mistake when they introduced him with the "pheromone spray" story and I think they didn't realize that people would see it as "date rape" when the wrote that story. Like someone else said here, they had a wonderful chance to fix that and they wasted it.

Funny but Ianto lies and cheats as well. But he does it for different reasons, he wants to save Lisa and that's probably the point on which many people fell for that character.

And Tosh? I wish there would have been more Tosh.

[sandysan2013.livejournal.com]

I feel blessed to have come to Torchwood after CoE if only because I missed all the focus on Gwen in the promotional material, interviews and such. I was shocked to find that she was the "star" of the show. I'd never watch a show for that character or that actress. Torchwood was always about Captain Jack for me and I even went back to Jack's firstappearance in Dr. Who before I watched any Torchwood. I wanted to see the character evolve and became his fan long before I knew anything about Gwen or even RTD.

I though CoE was the end of the show. It felt like the end and having seen more of Miracle Day than was palatable, I still beleive CoE was the end of Torchwood. I was really sad to go and wished that there had been more episodes and seasons of what we're now calling Classic Torchwood. I'd have loved to see more of Owen, Tosh and Ianto. I even liked Andy, Rhiannon, Rhys, Mica, David, Kathy Swanson and others who we didn't get to see a lot of. I saw more than I wanted of Gwen. I was putoff in the very first episode when she Rhys asks her about the murder in the center of town and she tells him it had nothing to do with her. That was a lie and she knew it. There was no reason for it so I think she's looking for excuses to say that Torchwood changed her. She was always a liar. I was appalled when she accused the others of being less human and less caring about Carys because they were eating lunch and having some time out after having been up all night and all morning because she screwed up and put Cradiff's male population in danger. What could be done for carys was being done. Others set those action in motion. Gwen, who to this point hadn't done one correct thing to fix her mistake, still takes the others to task for taking a breather. She never contributed to the successful conclusion of that case and for the life of me, I don't know what jack means when he tells her to show the team what it means to be human. I've never even seen that satisfactorily explained in fanfiction and most of the really good explanations of Torchwood come from fanfiction. The show runners and writers created this wonderful thing that they then handled badly. I'm going to miss Torchwood, but it really did end with CoE and part of the blame lays atthe feet of runners and writers who hitched their wagons to a miserable character who was hard to like and with few redeeming qualities. A woman who could bed Owen when she has Rhys at home just isn't sensible enough for anyone to use as a role model. I certainly never want to be like her and hope that good people entrusted to keep the planet safe from bad aliens will be smarter, more courageous, and more skilled. All her "talents" and accomplishments came as a surprise. She certainly never showed any promise of being able to lead anyone anywhere or solve any computer or mechanical problem. She didn't even seem very good at her police liaison duties. A really great liaison would have made an effort to mend that relationship. I could go on but I'm about two years too late to join this conversation and make a difference.