ReviewStack: Coroner's Report on Tom Schecter

on Violence in Tom Schechter's The Daughter's of Vei

(Image from, some page on FB, when Dall-E could do neater stuff, meme by me, 2022)

Coroner’s Report: Reviewstack

On Violence in Tom Schecter's The Daughter's of Vei

Housekeeping

Before I get into the meat, and oh, there’s meat here: Some brand housekeeping.

Burnt Tongue now has a website: www.burnt-tongue.net where apparently to start we’re hosting workshops and classes. Currently

Craig Clevenger

is returning to the bully pulpit after over a decade in Death Valley. He brings with him a vastly overhauled and reworked class expanding on his former LitReactor and Cult offering (one of the most popular they ran regularly, it was never NOT full, I’d know, I never got in but tried a dozen times.) 200 Proof Storytelling.

The Storyteller’s Workbench. The first class starts July 7th. It’s an 8 seat, 4 week intensive, self guided workshop with peer crit and weekly feedback from the myth himself, hosted by Burnt Tongue. (I don’t even know what this thing is anymore to be honest) I was going to announce it in a proper post, but I announced it in notes and it filled in 9 hours, which is 30 days and 15 hours less than Clev thought it would take to fill.

We are now taking waitlist for what will be, Clevenger has decided, a second round of the workshop. The Waitlist is half full for a second class that will run back to back with the first, possibly with a short break between.

If you want to learn from one of the BEST, prose stylists and storytellers of the past 20 years, a true writer’s writer, save your pennies and sign up on the site. You have until August to save your lunch money for this limited engagement.

This workshop has literally helped launch careers. (Rob Hart most generously credits Clev with helping him, and he’s got a novel out at the end of the month, a sequel to his sleeper hit Assassin’s Anonymous titled The Medusa Protocol.)

Craig only makes one promise about his class, and everyone I know who’s taken it says it’s true, so here we quote

“There is only one promise I give students who take my workshops and it is, you will come out of this class a better writer than you were when you came in.”

- Craig Clevenger

And there may be more classes coming soon. Time’s gonna tell.

I’m going to lean all the way into the autopsy theme since I’ve already got the Autopsy series, Autoclave for news and tea, but now any critical reviews under the Reviewstack label will be the Coroner’s Report, and essays will be under Craft Pathology et al.

Brand cohesion or something. Maybe I just thought it was cute and witty. I’m like that.

Fiction will still just be fiction though. Some things you don’t need to gussy up. They speak for themselves.

I’ve changed a bunch of other shit around during this slow rolling rebrand aside from color scheme and whatnot, but that’s for the Autoclave. And this ain’t the room we keep the Autoclave in.

As advertised above.

Coroner’s Report: Reviewstack

On Violence in Tom Schecter’s Daughter of Vei

First, Daughter’s of Vei is a prequel to the Shieldbreaker Saga, and a fine read. Tom already has a fully realized world, obviously knows what he’s doing, and manages to write fantasy in a register that is accessible and not incredibly fucking annoying (by genre standards)

Simpulacra

has called it GrimDark fantasy, a Warhammer 40k reference, and it sort of fits.

Why do I like it? It’s complete. The world feels extant. You’re dropped into Daughters of Vei in the prologue in media res and it just feels like this is already a fully realized place. His mixture of contemporary and fantasy level vernacular is incredibly hard to pull off from a technical perspective without it bouncing. It sounds as natural and unpretentious in its prose as most fantasy is dense and near impenetrable by comparison. If he didn’t pull it off it would be like shoving Fatboy slim remixes into a noir movie from the 1940s. As it stands, he’s more pulled off the enviable feat of weaving modern songs into an alien narrative, like all the music that doesn’t belong that’s been reworked to great effect in the soundtrack to Westworld. You could score some of the scenes in Daughters of Vei with Iggy Pop screaming “I am the world’s forgotten boy, the one who searches and destroys” and I wouldn’t bat an eyelash.

What’s this review about?

VIOLENCE

In a note Tom said: “Andy Futuro said, in our interview with EK a few months ago, something to the effect that violence should feel horrible, so as not to glorify it. I hope I did that well here.”

Since Violence is my bread and butter, one of my favorite things to write, a subject near and dear to my heart in all ways, philosophically, morally, take your pick, and I write it REALLY FUCKING GOOD I set out to finish reading the extant published pieces of Daughter’s of Vei, and judge whether he’s done both the job he hoped to in the above quote, but also, whether he did so effectively, stylishly, and with verve.

But before you get all of this out of context, go read the whole thing start to finish at the link below. I’ll wait.

The Daughters of Vei, PROLOGUE: Messengers

Done? Cool. Moving on.

Daughter’s of Vei is a clusterfuck of a story in the best way. It has tribal court intrigue, divine messengers (or crazy violent women, which, we all know I’m fond of) a bumbling but holy mission coup attempt, and a looming threat to a tribal kingdom held together by the power of an aging and great Warlord. Really exciting stuff, and well written.

I’ve picked excerpts from where I was reading in part 2, through the end of what’s available, and there is extensive quoting. Commentary will be in parentheticals and italicized interspersed with or behind the text under review.

So let’s stop holding our breath, right?

A Bit of the Old Ultraviolence

(My first pull is mid scene, deal with it) “…of shouting and heavy footsteps and planted legs and shields crashing against one another and the screams of the hurt and the dying and the just plain terrified, and those noises get louder and closer and the room begins to vibrate with it, to hum, to fucking sing with it, and the death song fills her,” (This is a prophetic sequence, and the first violent thing I came across. It is not so much detailed as it is expressionistic, because this is a DMT class Machine Elf spiritual vision dealing with eschaton. The prose is clean and doesn’t linger on any unnecessary brutality, even in the dreamtime, but it does a fantasic job of building vibe, and I very much liked this entire scene. It catches just enough of the whiff of violence to let you know something around the bend is fantastically bad. An example of the way Tom plays with the register and syntax breaking genre standards is even right here on the first pull “to fucking sing with it, and the death song fills her.” You can say anything you want about the prose, and I see places where I’d suggest minor edits, but he is unquestionably in control of his prose and his story. When I found out he wrote this in 8 weeks in private conversation, I was even more shocked.)

---

“Alakuz nodded and made himself walk half a step past them, waiting until they could only see his back before he drew his knife and spun back around. (This is excellent staging of sequence. Economy of words. It ends kinetic, and this is at an important point in the story, but I’m not going to give anything away, needless to say, he sets up getting to this point excellently.)

The clever one’s throat was open in a fraction of a second, (starting out the next line after the break kinetic but without going into more detail leaves it to the reader to decide how this happened, aside from very fast, and that’s a good choice. I’m not confused on where anyone is, and I’m drawn forward) and Alakuz had his newly wet blade pointed at the other one’s right eye before his friend even hit the ground. (I’m just going to say it now, I like Alakuz and he’s a bad motherfucker. Newly wet blade is a great detail, along with keeping up the speed of the action without burning extra words. There was more to this scene, but if you wanna know what happens to idiot two (it’s not pretty) you’re gonna have to read for yourself.)

“Tell me why he lied, or you die much slower.” (ending with great big bad motherfucker energy on the dialogue, excellent.)

---

(We continue with Alakuz) There were four more men, and they had clearly not reckoned with the possibility of being caught. (IRL considering the op they’re carrying out in the story, I wouldn’t believe it for a second, but given the tribal nature of the society he’s created and the characters in question, it works.) They were clumsy, and coming way too fast for their own good,(Again, good sequence of action, I’d reword it but it does it’s job and doesn’t get in the way. When I’m reading a highly kinetic scene and the words start to get in the way, I don’t care how well written they are, you’re losing me, and probably the rest of your readers.) and Alakuz was calm and collected and spinning between the middle two before they could even press an attack, and they were down in an instant, one cut through the throat with the dagger, the other sliced open at the waist with the sword. (Clean execution. Depending on the execution and feel you’re going for, there are an infinite number of ways to write violence. Tom does something many authors absolutely refuse to do, keeps it simple and moving. Appropriate for both the pace of the scene and the character perpetrating the violence. A veteran warrior making contact with young bucks who immediately give up their advantage by mounting a clumsy charge on a single man with at least a dagger. There’s an art to writing good kinetic scenes involving blades that gets lost in the sauce because of how dramatically wrong most media gets knife attacks. For example, a firearm attack on average involves one shot, one wound, and has a 30% mortality rate. A knife or blade attack on average, across the board, involves 39 stab or cut wounds, and has a mortality rate of 75% or more. Combat like Tom is writing here is brutal, fast, and decisive. Sword fights on average lasted about three moves, one of which was going to kill you. If you’ve ever seen a good Samurai movie where they circle each other sort of flinch checking and tapping swords for five minutes before there are three moves and it’s over, that’s because this is how one on one bladed combat worked. It’s how it still works actually, it’s just much more rare now.)

The stink of blood and shit and steaming innards made his eyes water (Simple exposition to prove that even someone like Alakuz, who just killed two youngsters in a quick turning flourish, still gets icky when the smell of shit and blood hits fresh air. Great detail.) as he completed his turn and landed in his stance, left leg forward, blades crossed low in front of him. (In completing the visual chain you become aware of the fact that Alakuz is the bad motherfucker or the story so far, and instead of coming off as a flourish, the movement comes off thanks to what we know about Alakuz in the narrative by now as the end of a drill he’s practiced over, and over, and over again. But it was still cool looking in my head. -1 point for the glorification of violence.) Then he was on the move again. (Fast paced kinetic action scenes are one place you can get away with “then” a lot, as long as what comes between the “then” is concise and well written. It’s a tool, botch it and you look foolish, pull it off and the reader psychologically subvocalizes “then” as a marker of continuance of movement, scene, or both.) The other two were stumbling to a halt and turning to face him again but he was already slipping between them as they were trying desperately to get their guard up(Tom could have added in one beat of continued movement for Alukuz, but as it reads it is neither distracting nor does it take away from the action. He’s done it well enough that we’re assuming this man is going to slag whoever he finds in this place), and one made a wild a downward sword stroke while the other lunged, (The targets keep giving up any advantage. It’s a good example of training versus live fire. The character’s Alakuz is slaughtering here have been raised to be warriors, but they immediately panic and do all the wrong things when faced with Alakuz, who already has a badass reputation in the clans. Mike Tyson’s old adage that yeah, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Alakuz is obviously the veteran here, the only chance these characters would have had would be to create distance between them and him, which he’s making it hard to do to begin with, and present as a unit.) and Alakuz easily knocked the lunge aside with his dagger, spinning again (Spins are flourishes, usually uncommon in most forms of bladed or unarmed combat because they expose your back to an attacker at some point. That being said, anyone who’s seen someone pull off a spinning back elbow in an MMA fight and lay someone out knows that a professional can see the opening and know what to do with it. Bold move Alakuz, but I also get the feeling he’s showboating just a bit. I take no quarrel.) (a moving target is even harder to hit in the dark, popped Metan’s voice into his head) (the voice of Metan, the great warlord and warrior in question, playing in his head is a nice touch) to avoid the other blade as it flew down harmlessly towards the floor, and then his own sword was slicing through the lunging man’s back leg as he pulled the dagger back, shifted his weight to his left leg to reverse his momentum, and made one last thrust through the fourth man’s throat as he turned again. (This is the most well choreographed long action sequence yet. A complex dodge and parry is explained very well. Alakuz spins out of the way of a downstroke that hits the floor, while bringing his sword into the open back leg of his first attacker, immediately shifts weight to his left leg at the end of the spin, reverses the spin movement, and puts his dagger through second charging dumbasses throat, reverse grip or standard, at that point it really doesn’t matter, but from the action so far, I’m inclined to say he has his dagger in reverse grip as that would have the most thrusting power on the return spin, allowing him to just swing his arm sideon at the right distance already inside guard instead of having to worry about poking him from a fencer’s grip. So one swung down and got hamstrung, the other was charging on someone much faster than him and on the return movement caught a dagger in the neck, well played.)

He pulled the dagger out and reset himself, then turned once more towards the one he’d only hamstrung, who was on one knee trying to reset his defenses. The others weren’t moving.

“Who sent you?”

The boy moaned softly in pain and fear as he looked into Alakuz’s eyes. Then he willed himself to set his jaw, pulled his sword in close to his chest, and closed his eyes.

Alakuz didn’t have time to ask again. His last stroke took the man’s head clean off, (Well at least kid had the decency to know it was over. And yes, with a curved blade, which is what I’m envisioning, much like a shamshir, a well practiced stroke is all it takes to behead someone. I’ve seen the Saudi Arabian execution videos to prove it, they are fast, efficient, and very disturbing.) and he stepped past the falling body and ran to the back of the hall towards the Kogon’s quarters.

---

The Kogon groaned. Alakuz crouched down to get a look at him: he had a deep stab wound in his left shoulder that looked, from the angle of it (I say this sounds like he was aiming for the subclavian artery, if he hit or severed it, Kogon would have been dead in three minutes or so), like Varyta meant to pierce his heart (I’m also going to say that there’s a very good chance that these two wounds would look VERY similar in this universe, either a stab to the heart or severing the subclavian artery, at the described angle, it sounds like the subclavian is more likely though) and kill him quickly in one stroke. The screaming guard must have woken the Kogon up—not a moment too fucking soon, either.

“We have to go now, Kogon.” He leaned forward to look into his eyes: they were unfocused. He must have lost a lot of blood already. (He doesn’t linger on the fact that there WOULD BE by definition, a LOT of blood. This is the first rule of stab wounds, and something most media gets terminally fucked up, there is ALWAYS more blood than you expect.)

---

“He’s mine,” muttered Kivli, and the others stepped aside.

Ganruz ul-Tanaz would not be difficult to kill. Angry men were rarely patient enough to protect themselves properly. (Kivli is Queen shit badass and still suffering hallucinations from drinking a potent psychedelic cocktail that lets you talk to the gods, but yeah, angry unpatient opps are usually off balance to start with.)

The only question Kivli had at the moment was which of the three men charging (This is why they invented polearms. Charging someone with a sword who knows how to use it is always giving up the advantage of distance. I like that he makes people fuck this up, and rightly so, continuously) at her was the real Ganruz, and which two were the zok having a bit more fun with her. If, gods forbid, there was a next time, she’d be mixing it with water.

Best kill all three of them to be safe.

Maraz watched in horror and fascination as Kivli slipped past an already-gutted Ganruz, attacking in what seemed to be several directions at once. (To point out that even inebriated she’s a bad bad woman, she guts him first, dodges him, and then kills two hallucinations, which made me laugh.)

The older man was down already, bleeding from three different wounds from two different blades—any of which could have been mortal on its own—but Kivli was still whirling her weapons with the ferocity and desperation of a woman fighting many enemies at the same time. (Case in point. My guess is, and don’t quote me, but this will all eventually lead up to a grand duel between Kivli and Alakuz, the two baddest of the bad in this story.)

She stopped a few moments later than was necessary. Ganruz-Ohta fell face-first into the dust of the main road of Kalaa Ukruv’r, dead several times over.

---

Tarav was most of the way back to his barracks when he looked behind him and noticed the dark swordsman hot on his tail. (You gettin’ chased)

He broke into a full sprint. He only had a few hundred yards to go to make it to relative safety in numbers—

“Guards!” he heard Alakuz shout from behind him. “Take him!” (This is later, things are popping off, and Alakuz blindsides a greenhorn)

Twelve men in full gear were suddenly cutting a path away from one of the fancier houses on the street—was that Metan-Ohta’s house?

He veered right to outflank them. A long spear thudded into a wooden doorframe perilously close to his ankle, and he tripped over it, forced himself into a clumsy roll, and was back up on his feet quickly enough to avoid getting surrounded.

He was only fifty yards from the barracks house now. Maraz’s untimely warning about the lack of a battle standard rang in his ears.

“WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!” he screamed at the top of his lungs as turned into the alley that ended at his front door. (He probably should have started yelling a beat earlier, but he was busy. Good action sequencing, not violence per se, but surely showing that the oncoming engagements are going to enter an escalatory spiral and involve more and more members, which is hard to write without it ending up a clusterfuck)

---

(This scene is technically brilliant) Alakuz could tell from the volume and from the pitch that the enemy had numbers but were terrified, and that was good enough for him, in a tight space.

He doubted he had enough time to turn his men around, anyway.

He shouted “BRACE!” and six of his guards dropped to one knee at the edge of the alley with their shields anchored to the ground and their long spears resting on the bosses, pointed slightly upwards, to about chest height. The others leaned on the front rank’s shoulders and drove their spears forward to take the momentum out of the charge. (This is very proper)

A half-dozen of the attackers were dead within seconds, but the next wave got past the long spears and hit the tiny shieldwall with too much force not to knock it backwards. (Oddly enough this was a pretty common tactic for a long time, first rank accepts casualties to break the shield phalanx or defensive wall and then they breach and get inside guard man to man.)

Alakuz saw his right-most three men go down under sword thrusts and stepped into the gap to stop his men from being flanked and encircled. He ducked a wild sword swing (At this point I assume any swing on Alakuz from the youngsters is pretty well haymaker which indeed, I don’t doubt as written he could duck or parry) from one of Tarav’s boys and slew him with a single thrust to the chest, then shouted (This next bit is brilliant) “FALL BACK!” at the top of his lungs—and then tapped the man next to him gently with his left elbow. “Back one!” he called at closer to normal volume. (He sets them up right here)

His nine guards all took one step backwards right as he did.

“One more!” he called, and his line moved back another step.

He looked over his shield at the enemy mob in the alley: they were in confusion. A good many of them seemed to have fallen back in a panic on Alakuz’s desperate sounding command (one of Metan’s favorite tricks) and were now bumping into the advancing second wave, fatally sapping their momentum. (He has his men fall back two steps instead of fully retreat, regain formation, and then slaughter a second wave while the rest of the confused mob is falling back from the engagement in confusion instead of pushing the advance) The ones who were left alone out in front of his tiny shieldwall seemed keenly uninterested in any further hostilities without direct orders. (Yeah, no shit, finally, distance is a weapon.)

---

This would be sloppy, a brawl. He prayed silently that it was, at least, one of the traitors’ warbands they were fighting, then charged into the middle of the fracas. (Love a good donnybrook)

He bulled down one of the men in front of him with a full head of hair and cut down savagely with his sword, cutting deep into the man’s skull with one stroke. (your sword is now firmly lodged in bone, you had better be the Hulk because that’s not where you want your main weapon) He stomped on the man’s shoulder, sawing his sword out towards him rather than try to pull it upwards and open himself up too much, and thrust it forward into the face of the next closest unshorn warrior. (The man doing this has been established as basically a gigantic honkin’ dude. And this is one of the best descriptions of getting sword dislodged from bone efficiently and keeping kinetic force of violence moving that I’ve seen in prose, out-fucking-standing)

Then he heard a man doing a mediocre impression of a falcon, and suddenly several men were shouting “Fall back!” and the enemy, whoever the fuck they were, were retreating in bad order. (Again, the way he weaves in contemporary wording is great. “whoever the fuck they were” is out of place but fits perfectly. I love it.)

“Hello, Georz!” Mikal ul-Zalan was jogging towards him, probably smirking. He looked Georz up and down and Georz realized he must be covered in at least one of his victim’s blood. “Started without us, eh?” (This scene ending is gratuitous but you always have to have one of these moments. Is it a trope? Yes. But is it a genre expectation in this sort of story that helps make the story work within its bounds? Also yes.)

---

She tapped Mirani on the shoulder twice. Now.

Mirani pulled her bowstring tight (I’m imagining short recurve bows) and loosed an arrow into the sword-hand side of the warriors with the white shields.

—

The arrow hit its target in the throat, splashing drops of blood all over his white shield and the shields of his linemates. (And this is why archers are always a good thing to have. Gruesome image, but I like how Tom, unlike me, doesn’t feel the need to linger on a violent scene, almost never does he do this. The violence is in service to the story, and it is simply what has to happen, it is not spectacle and it is not needless. It just IS. This is a warrior culture. What do we expect?)

An instant later, twenty more arrows were flying into the Dazvar Valaz line.

“Shield wall! Shield wa—” screamed Tobiaz-Ohta before an arrow from a second volley ripped through his open mouth and buried itself where his spine met his skull. (But his imagery can be brutally precise, and I appreciate that.)

---

A good number of these little side paths would open back up into one of the main roads. Most of them, even. (What happens when you get lost down a dead end alley?)

But after the third left turn Zamal attempted and turned back from, Katuz had a bad feeling that this particular alley might not be one of them.

The front ranks of the company stopped. Katuz could hear Zamal grumbling as he decided whether to keep going or turn around. He heard a fluttering sound above him that sounded suspiciously like a curtain being blown in a breeze, and looked up just in time to see an arrow fly out of an open window towards him. (Yeah, you get ambushed)

He felt it fly past his left jaw—felt the breeze on his neck as death picked one of his linemates instead—and instinctively dropped to one knee below his shield (Assume these shields are larger than bucklers, smaller than phalanx, and if they’re going to absorb let’s say 50lb recurve bow fire, probably pretty solid). A full volley of arrows immediately followed the first. One of them bit deep into his shield but didn’t break through.

Several of the others tore into the bodies of his friends. (I thought this was a well written ambush scene)

There was shouting and screaming all around him, but no one was giving any orders. Zamal must be dead already. The rest of them would be dead any moment unless someone did something.

“To me!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Talat!”

Get down, overlap shields over everyone’s heads. Make a tent. Just like we’ve practiced every day for years—except usually there are more of us.

Someone jostled his right shoulder on the way down to join him. A few others got down next to them. “TALAT!” he screamed again, with all the breath he had. Another arrow thudded into the wood (yup, wood. Trying to get his men to turtle up) of his shield. “TALAAAAAAT!” There was the clattering of iron shield rims against wood, and a couple dozen thunks as another round of arrowheads stuck in the roof of the talat, and above them came a horrifying, keening scream from their attackers, and Katuz gritted his teeth and gripped his sword tight with his other hand and waited for the charge to come.

(And surprise, it didn’t come. the Vei melted back into the shadows from which they came. Shortly after part six ends and the finale, part 7, doesn’t drop until June 18th.)

Of further note in the story, one clash with the Daughters of Vei shows their prowess in battle compared to the greenhorns they’re working with by way of numbering the dead after an encounter. 12 Daughters of Vei manage to slaughter 42 men. That is a K/D ratio of one Daughter of Vei for every 3.5 men she kills, and it’s pointed out in the text that these diehard psychos volunteered to martyr themselves on a suicide mission.

Tom has managed to carry out a lot of well written violence in a compelling serial that I read five chapters of tonight because it sucked me in, then I immediately had to make this post.

I’d suggest you buy his book, linked at the button below, and by the time it gets to you, the last of the Daughter’s of Vei will have dropped and you’ll be able to start the Shieldbreaker saga fresh.

Not only that, it’s only $12.99

He also had a big mushy announcement post and whatnot, but fuck that, give me blood. The writing is excellent, above par for most fantasy genre fiction you’ll find in a bookstore, big box or otherwise, and while there are some things textually as an editor that I would have changed, the story itself is solid as a fucking rock, and that’s what kept me reading.

Yeah, the experimental indie literary snob to end them all getting sucked into pure genre fiction and being able to elucidate from a technical perspective why it’s both above par, and worth reading, whether fantasy is your thing or not.

The characters are human, all too human *Father John Misty Dance* and the humanity of the characters is a driving force in the story. Even characters mentioned in passing or with one scene who then die are handled like they’re, you know, people. That’s rare.

And aside from a few instances, yeah, I think he kept to Andy’s assertion, the violence isn’t highly stylized aside from a very specific key scene, and beyond that it isn’t glorified at all, it is simply the result of a horrific causal chain of events that in the world of power games and court intrigue mixed with animism and strange patron gods who talk to one of the characters, yeah, is totally believable. A tragedy and comedy of errors leading to both a slaughter of the youth and a slaughter of seasoned veterans, weakening or destroying an entire clan from within. In the hands of someone else I would expect less.

In fact, I put off reading Tom’s work because I am not huge on fantasy and I REALLY like him, he’s a great guy, he has helped me (and the rest of the quality fiction community we have budding here) a lot, whether ya know it or not. I was terrified I wouldn’t like his writing. I hate it when I make a friend who’s a writer and I just can’t stand their writing.

To say I’m pleasantly surprised would be an incredible understatement.

He’s also not got a huge readership, and he’s pumping out high quality work. So if you’re subscribed to me and you like fantasy, especially if it doesn’t have fucking elves in it, go check him out. He’s a talent on the come up.

But it’s obvious that aside from the fully realized world, he also really knows a lot about pre-modern combat. And that’s pretty well super cool if you ask me. (I’m a dork. Don’t ask me.)

And that’s the end of the first Coroner’s Report: Reviewstack.

Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

Yeah, I probably should have included more pictures, but hey, deal with it, OK, this was a spur of the moment thing.