Touched by Venom: Introduction and Part One

[pangolin20]

theepistler wrote in antishurtugal, 2017-05-05 10:14:00
LOCATION: hell
MOOD: depressed
MUSIC: Godeigo - Monkey Magic

Touched By Venom: Introduction and Part One

“Compelling and harrowing.” ~Jacqueline Carey

"Fucking insane and horrible" ~Most of the Internet

"Please just shoot me now"~The_Epistler

We at AS have of course spent plenty of time bitching about the Inheritance Cycle and the way a supposedly dragon-centric story horribly mistreats its dragon characters. We’ve also thoroughly exposed the ludicrous amounts of wish-fulfillment and plot armour. All the important “good” characters in Inheritance are carefully protected by a thick titanium shield of Author Love, and all their problems are instantly solved for them before they are forced to undergo the terrible, horrible ordeal known as “character development”. And we’ve frequently complained about how undeveloped and unrealistic the setting is.

Touched By Venom is… kinda the opposite of all that. Today we make a switch from Fantasy Fluff and plunge into the depths of Grimdark. Sick of coddled, babied characters who never have to work for anything? Well now it’s time for characters who are horribly mistreated every five seconds and pretty much never get anywhere no matter how hard they try because their author keeps deliberately ruining everything. Did you find Inheritance irritatingly sexless and immature? Fear not! It’s time for lots of really graphic sexual content, and also nudity! Tired of Inheritance’s way too clean and comfortable setting, where even the supposed poor people eat chicken for breakfast and have fully-furnished private bedrooms with all the mod cons? Not to worry – Touched by Venom supplies dirt, starvation, disease and general squalor by the truckload! Bored of Euro-centric fantasy settings? Not this time around! Now we’re in the Exotic East… or something vaguely resembling it, anyway.

And yes, there is dragon sex in this book. Lots and lots of dragon sex. Even more mind-bogglingly, this is actually central to the plot. No I’m not kidding. Dragon-on-human beastiality is an actual plot point in this story, and supplies more or less the only form of magic which appears in the entire trilogy. And I should know; I’m the only person in the known universe actually to have actually read all three books. What can I say? I was curious and I don’t value either my sanity or my liver all that highly.

Now, I’m all for realistic fantasy stories. I’ve been known to enjoy fluff, but I also like my stories to have at least some grounding in reality. And I’m quite the fan of dark, violent stories. I love the works of Clive Barker, and was a huge Robin Jarvis fan as a child (Jarvis’ novels, despite being for kids, are incredibly fucked-up and all of them feature a significant body count). I’ve also enjoyed some of the works of Stephen King and China Mieville.

And I will admit that this trilogy does several things right. The setting is believable, original, well-developed and fairly interesting. The dragons are well-designed– they don’t breathe fire, don’t talk, and aren’t (particularly) magical. The female protagonist (despite what the cover would have you believe) isn’t a great beauty, or possessed of any special Sue talents – she’s not a great warrior in this incredibly patriarchal setting, or a perfect singer, or anything of the sort. She’s basically just an average Jane, albeit an extremely fucked-up one thanks to what the author puts her through on every other page. Even the inevitable conlang isn’t too painful.

But these good parts are ultimately not enough to save the trilogy, as anything potentially entertaining in this story is ultimately buried under the absurd – repeat absurd – levels of “gritty” and “shocking” themes, scenes and plot points. This is one of those stories where the author is so determined to make it grimly realistic that it eventually becomes farcical and ultimately impossible to either believe or take all that seriously. There is not one genuinely nice person in this trilogy; everyone is a selfish jerk at best, a child-raping sociopath at worst. Nothing remotely pleasant ever happens. If something can go horribly wrong, it will go horribly wrong every single time without fail, to the point that it becomes tediously predictable.

The protagonist herself is so constantly reduced to a human punching (or raping) bag that it’s almost impossible to really get a handle on her character. And she, like everyone else, isn’t particularly well-developed to begin with. It should be relatively easy to sympathise with a character as horribly abused as she is, but in the end the 24-7 ordeal which passes as her life simply becomes exhausting to read about and you stop giving a fig. And quite frankly given all she goes through she should be reduced to a PTSD-stricken wreck incapable of doing anything protagonist-y. But of course this doesn’t happen, because the author’s dedication to “realism” is nothing of the sort – the focus is all on making it as dark and quite frankly depressing as humanly possible, which is as unrealistic as any two fluffy wish fulfillment stories you’d care to name. This series contains just about every unpleasant thing you could possibly think of: Poverty, rape, violence, female genital mutilation (described in graphic detail of course), gore, child abuse, rape, drug addiction, beastiality (also described in graphic detail, repeatedly), murder, incest, rape, the oppression of women, rape, the oppression of the poor, and did I mention rape? Yes, I’m afraid it’s another case of an author thinking gritty realism = rape on every other page. Quite honestly if you have a rape fetish you
should probably just own up to it rather than pretend you’re being “realistic”.

The of course there is the constant focus on sex. Being an asexual I’m not particularly fond of the topic to begin with; for me at least I never really grew past the childish reaction of “eww, that’s gross!” when faced with sexual matters. But even I can tell when an author is going way overboard. And the thing is that sex in this series is never portrayed as something romantic, emotionally fulfilling or even enjoyable. Oh, no. That would imply something nice happening, and the author can’t abide that. All the sex in this trilogy is bad, or at least drab and depressing to read about. And I’m not even kidding when I tell you that 99.9% of the sex in this series that isn’t beastiality is inflicted (“had” really isn’ the right word here) upon either rape victims or sex slaves (is there any difference?). Rape happens so frequently that when the protagonist is gang-raped in one of the books I actually completely missed it the first time around. It was handled about as casually as a trip to the shops.

Oh yeah – there is also homosexual sex in the trilogy, but that’s handled just as insensitively as the rest of it. And yes, there is both man-on-man and woman-on-woman – I can see you up the back there. If this trilogy wasn’t so thoroughly unpleasant to read, it could very easily be re-classified as porn. As it is, sex has never been less appealing.

Ladies and Gentlemen… let the trainwreck begin.


Part One: Zarq’s Miserable Depressing Childhood

We open with the inevitable prologue, and to begin with I’ll give you a quick taste of the prose style:

They came into the yard on a cloud of red dust, four young aristocrats burning with indignation and wine, and they went into the potters’ work shed and hauled the woman out by her hair. They dragged her along the floor, through shards of of shattered statues, out into the yard, where the smoke from the kilns was only just beginning to turn the air chalky. One man broke her jaw beneath his boot heel, then…

That should give you the general idea. The author clearly isn’t pulling any punches; we open with brutal violence right off the bat. Also this is a flash-forward to something that happens later in the book, obviously put here because the actual opening chapter is nowhere near as… uh… is interesting the right word?

Anyway, so the pissed off nobles beat the shit out of the woman, then tie her husband up and have him ripped to pieces by the tame dragon they’ve brought with them. The gore is of course described in graphic detail. We then learn that the leader of the aristocrats is a charming fellow by the name of Kratt. Kratt is – nominally – the villain of the book, and has zero redeeming features. We are also informed – twice – that he’s a blond and blue-eyed white guy, the implication being that the serfs aren’t Caucasian themselves. Yep, it’s the Curse of the Evil White Guy again. As it turns out, all the top nobility are white, and all of them are rich, spoiled and arrogant.

And you know what? For more or less the first time in my life as a white person I’m actually feeling rather insulted on a racial level. I mean really – these guys couldn’t possibly be any more of an Imperialist stereotype. I’d be more okay with it if I didn’t already know that not one of them has any actual human qualities whatsoever – they’re caricatures more or less to a (wo)man. Yes, I know us white people have done a lot of conquering and oppressing over the centuries, but depicting us as clichéd rich swaggering villains probably isn’t helping anything.

Moving on, you’ll never guess who the dead guy and the woman with the broken jaw are. My goodness, they’re the child protagonist’s parents? Who would have thought it. And now she wants revenge for her father’s murder? Wow, the Plot-o-Matic™ is already chugging away. Can we please have a fantasy novel in which Dead Parents aren’t the protagonist’s main motivation?

Well, I am being rather generous with the word “motivation” here – the protagonist, introduced here as Zarq Kavarria Darquel, is frustratingly passive for most of the trilogy and tends to forget about the whole “dead daddy” (and later mummy) thing for long stretches.

Moving on to chapter one, we now get a not very interesting description of Zarq’s origins. She comes from a peasant village ruled over by a “dragon estate” known as “Clutch Re”. Clutch Re is named that because they have ownership of a precious male dragon named Re. Male dragons are prized because so far no-one has been able to breed one in captivity – captive eggs always hatch into females and nobody knows why. Peasants in this world are so lowly they’re basically slaves, and Zarq’s mother came from a different Clutch as part of payment for a betting debt. Zarq’s dad, smitten, immediately claimed her as his wi… uh, his “roidan yan”, or “garden of children”.

Yeah, it’s one of those kinds of books.

Women serfs are even lowlier than the men – even when they’re married they’re not allowed to live with their husbands, and sex takes place exclusively in special “mating shacks”. No, really. For some reason I’m reminded of the Joy Division in Nazi concentration camps, where female prisoners were used as sex slaves. And that’s really not a good thing.

Anyhoo, so Zarq’s mother Kavarria is also half Djimbi, the Djimbi being a nomadic hunter gather people who live in the jungle and have green hair and “whorls” on their skins. How exotic! And needless to say anyone with Djimbi blood is racially prejudiced against and blah blah blah I think you can fill in the rest. Meanwhile Zarq and her hot older sister Waivia go to watch a special ceremony where young men chosen to work for the dragon master have to walk down the “lane of pain” (no, really), and then be lashed with whips soaked in hallucinogenic dragon venom. Here we also meet a boy named Dono, who quite frankly comes across as a deranged little freak. Despite being just a kid, he ripped out all his baby teeth so he’d be recognised as a Man, but his adult teeth just rotted so now he’s completely toothless and speaks with a Daffy Duck style lisp.

Unfortunately, Dono will become important later.

Now for the only part of the book most people know anything about: the venom cock! No, really, that’s the actual phrase used in the book. The apprentices heading down the Lane O’ Pain all have huge erections for some weakly explained reason, and we get this priceless bit:

The venom cock, they’re called. I’d heard the words grunted respectfully among pottery clan men. [snip] Understand, women do not revere the venom cock as men do.

Rather unfortunately, this part was included in an extract handed around at a convention for promotional purposes before the book came out, resulting in immediate mockery from the con-goers, some of them authors themselves. The publicist responsible (I think it was the publicist, anyway) responded by throwing a very public hissy-fit. And now you know the only reason why people have heard of this book.

Blah blah blah, descriptions of the dragonmaster’s fancy clothes, and he looks like a drug addict thanks to years of imbibing dragon venom. Some dragons join the procession, and we learn that some female dragons are used as pack animals and have their claws, wings and venom sacks removed at birth. I’m having trouble believing that such a procedure would be remotely survivable in a setting with no anasthetic or antiseptic, or proper surgical tools, and even more so when it’s performed on a newly hatched animal. Try cutting the front legs off a newborn kitten with an unsterilised steak knife and see how that works out for you.

Oh, and the common people in this world worship dragons but are somehow okay with this and eating dragon eggs as one of their staple foods. Seems legit.

We then learn that Zarq’s hot sister Waivia really wants to own one of the whips, and has (ugh) promised sexual favours to Dono (who, might I add, is fucking nine years old) so he’ll win one for her. She also wants to catch the eye of Kratt, who is present, hoping he’ll sweep her off her feet and make her his personal sex slave. No, it really says that. Not “mistress” or “lesser wife”, but some fakey made up word for a sex slave.

I’m having a hard time accepting that this thing was written by a woman right now. Just… ugh.

In the meantime, among the guys being whipped is a little boy who was apparently just thrown in there as “dragon fodder”, and we get to see the poor little bastard being graphically whipped to shreds while screaming for his mother. There’s no actual reason for this to be here – the kid will never be referenced again – but it’s “gritty”, you see. Zarq competes for the whip, wins, and instantly absorbs the venom through her skin, which causes her to go on a drug trip. Dono is pissed, and racially abuses Zarq’s mother as a Djimbi. She responds by pompously yelling about how the Djimbi are all wise and enlightened and shit, and Zarq thinks of her as “a dragonwhore”.

Wow.

One thing corny fantasy novels like to do is jam the word “dragon” together with another word in order to look suitably Fantastical, frequently in the title. I think by now I’ve seen them all. Dragoncharm, Dragonflight, Dragonheart, Dragonwine, Dragonsong, Dragonsword, Dragonlord, Dragondream, Dragondrums, Dragonspear. And now it would seem the other shoe has finally dropped: let us all praise the lord and add Dragonwhore to the list. Could this be Janine Cross’ real unique contribution to fantasy and everybody missed it?

Either way that’s chapter one over and done with. It’s 16 pages long, and in those 16 pages the author managed to fit in:

-Pedophilia

-Child abuse/murder

-Drug abuse

-Torture

-Drug abuse

-Penises

-Racism

-Sex slaves

-Misogyny

-Graphic violence and gore

And would you believe this is tame compared with what’s just around the corner? We haven’t even gotten to the female circumcision yet, and boy will that be a fun ride. I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling thoroughly entertained right now.

47 comments

kayliolayskie
May 5 2017, 11:31:48
wat.

I don't understand. This got written by a woman and was published... how?


torylltales
May 5 2017, 12:00:19 Edited: May 5 2017, 12:04:04
I think the greatest sin is that all the violence, torture etc. etc. is so emotionless. It's never about how it affects the character, or how she reacts to it, or what she thinks about it. It's just described like a police report, stripped of any emotional content or personal perspective that might colour the actions.

This seems to be a common theme of "gratuitous violence" scenes in poorly written books. And indeed of poorly written stories in general.



theepistler
May 5 2017, 12:41:35
Yeah, that's exactly what the problem is. There's just no emotion in the writing, or any particular emotion from the protagonist. Mistakes like that can make even the most violent and gruesome content as boring as a tax return. The author's inability to colour the story and description through the protagonist's eyes is all through the book as well, and becomes particularly glaring (not to mention off-putting) when we keep getting overtly sexual descriptions of Zarq's immediate family members, which makes it look as if the underage protagonist is checking out her sister's bodacious tatas and later on her own mother's naked breasts and crotch. Reading it made me incredibly uncomfortable. As in "child molestation" levels of uncomfortable.


w3rew0lfgirl_99
May 5 2017, 12:08:03
Wow!

minionnumber2
May 5 2017, 13:29:53
Oh god this book..Godspeed, Espitler, random scenes from this book still come to mind a good 6 years after reading another sporking and I never even
read the full book.


theepistler
May 5 2017, 14:07:34
It would probably have a bigger impact on me if I actually cared about any of it. The characters are so boring and underdeveloped that even watching them suffer horribly is mostly just boring and unpleasant rather than upsetting.


minionnumber2
May 6 2017, 10:21:37
Less upsetting more... why. Why did anyone think this was a good idea?


theepistler
May 6 2017, 10:31:53
Yeah, I say that a lot in this spork. I think I'll post the next part now.


paulp1993
May 5 2017, 15:22:53
Jack Churchill didn't charge into battle with a basket-hilted sword against gun-toting Nazis for this misery to befall us...


theepistler
May 5 2017, 17:36:41
All hope is lost. Repent ye and be saved, for the apocalypse be nigheth.

Moris Kurth
May 6 2017, 02:40:29
He also didn't kill a Nazi with a bow so we go insane from badly written "Grimdark" literature.


Anonymous
May 5 2017, 16:49:31
I wish you all the best. I mean, you already read them while I only saw glimpses and discussions on sporking blogs.
Anyway. Wow.

Oh btw, I think I have to disagree on one thing: dead parents as the main character's motivation:
Actually still works for female characters in my opinion. Beats rape as traumatic event anyway. This is with how little I'm already happy. If a female main character doesn't have rape as a tragic past.
Wow.
Says a lot about our society and media to this day. :c


theepistler
May 5 2017, 17:18:11
Oh, the Dead Parents thing has nothing to do with her being female; it's just a huge fantasy cliche in general and I'm getting pretty tired of it. I'm actually rather proud of myself in that the protagonist of one of my novels is an orphan whose father was murdered... and this has no bearing on the plot and never becomes important, and no his father doesn't turn out to be secretly still alive, or a villain.

It's a moot point anyway; rape is still a huge part of Zarq's Traumatic Past. Except it's her sister who gets raped, not her. It just hasn't happened yet. So if I were you I'd revoke Ms Cross' brownie points for that.

Anonymous
May 5 2017, 17:22:23
Ouch


theepistler
May 5 2017, 17:28:44
Trust me - you ain't seen nothing yet.

vaskrslacigla
May 6 2017, 07:51:25
........
Are you going to do whole trilogy?


theepistler
May 6 2017, 10:04:38
I plan to.

hergrim
May 5 2017, 21:16:47
Where do I send the alcohol?

Can we please have a fantasy novel in which Dead Parents aren’t the protagonist’s main motivation?

I'd like to see an inversion of this, where the protagonist is the one directly responsible for their parents death (maybe they were abusive, maybe it was a mercy kill or maybe it was the lesser of two evils) and their motivation isn't revenge but redemption. Rather than trying to cut a bloody swath through innumerable enemies to reach the Bad Guy™, they undergo a pilgrimage of repentance. Perhaps that includes a self-destructive and suicidal period where they fight many battles, but it would ultimately end with a good deal of self reflection.


ggsauron
May 5 2017, 21:33:36
That vaguely sounds like the plot of Spider-Man. His Uncle dies (becaus I believe he was to arrogant to use his powers) and he becomes Spider-Man si that his powers can be used to save other Loved


theepistler
May 5 2017, 22:38:07
Yeah, that's a good example. Spider Man doesn't think to use his powers for anything other than getting the girl and humiliating bullies until his foolery gets his uncle killed and he realises he could and should be using his powers to save other people from meeting a similar fate.

PS: You can edit LJ comments if you have an account.


ggsauron
May 6 2017, 00:23:13 Edited: May 6 2017, 00:25:59
I only see the options "track" and "delete" so were do I find edit?

edit: nevermind, it just didnt show because the other one was made with the app


theepistler
May 6 2017, 00:26:47
You can't edit your comment after someone has replied to it, btw.


ggsauron
May 6 2017, 00:29:54 Edited: May 6 2017, 00:38:35
Btw because I cant find away to send you an image via PM ill show it here:

I read that one yesterday and couldn't stop laughing. atleast until I realised that I read inheritance as well...

p.s. in the medieval times they were able to sterilise knife by putting it in a couldron with boiling water. that kills the bacteria ;)


theepistler
May 6 2017, 10:19:44
LOL! Oh man, which Epistle is that from? (It's been a while).


ggsauron
May 6 2017, 16:32:14
It's the sixt

theepistler
May 6 2017, 17:35:03
Dayum, I keep forgetting just how many of those things I wrote and how long they are! Just goes to show how productive I can be when I care about what I'm doing, hahah.


Anonymous
May 6 2017, 00:23:35
I a working on a proyect that is EXACTLY that kind of story:

The main character is an orphan who was part of a family that was considered enemy of the state by the emperess, and he told her where to find them in exchange of an amnesty for all of them.
The twist is that the emperess DID offered them an amnesty, but they tried to attack her the second her back was turned. And so she executed them.
The main character is now left with the scars of a burning coal that one of his brothers tried to make him swallow before getting captured, and hates himself because considers himself responsible for their deaths, to the point that he thinks he DESERVES the scar that left him speechless.

I´m not sure if any of you find it overdone, but I think is a little more original and arguably realistic that other stories, especially this one.


Anonymous
May 6 2017, 01:06:52
Xena: Warrior Princess perhaps?


Anonymous
May 6 2017, 02:09:10
That's almost point for point Seigefried's arc in the Soul series (give or take a few demonic posessions). Though the more interesting stuff is regulated to in game bios rather then prose driven narrative. Still, fun stuff.


Anonymous
May 5 2017, 23:33:00
Justo one question: Is this goung to be like the Brisingr spork or you are going to face this ABOMINATION alone like you did with Life and Death from SMeyer?

By the way, the Brisingr spork is still un process?


theepistler
May 5 2017, 23:56:27
This time around it's just me. I told a few fellow sporkers about what I was doing and they just laughed and said "good luck with that". That or "for the love of gods don't do this! Think of your poor liver! And your sanity! Please, we love you! Don't do this to yourself!"

Wimps.

And yes, the Brisingr spork is still in progress. We're currently waiting on pipedreamno20 to post the next chapter. (Get on with it, woman! I can't keep this lot distracted forever!)


Anonymous
May 6 2017, 00:14:17
But your efforts are welcome ;)


theepistler
May 6 2017, 00:22:01
*bows graciously*


Anonymous
May 6 2017, 08:57:21
(Different anon)

May the force of others be with you!


dinogrrl
May 6 2017, 08:40:31
Well, as far as having claws/wings/venom sacs removed as babies and surviving...setting aside ethics for a moment, my mind immediately compared that to getting a puppy's tail docked and dewclaws removed. So yeah, I could suspend disbelief enough to go along with dragons surviving amputations as hatchlings. (And also I could believe a society worshiping an animal but still doing horrible things to it and also eating it/things it produces.)

Ugh, the memories of working for a vet who did that stuff is almost as bad as this book sounds. Just...ugh. Yet I am strangely compelled to find out what other sorts of depths this book sinks to.


w3rew0lfgirl_99
May 6 2017, 09:11:20
I agree.


theepistler
May 6 2017, 10:20:54
I am SO glad it's illegal to declaw cats here in Australia.

dinogrrl
May 6 2017, 12:49:07
I wish we'd ban it here, but no. Because AMERICA, fuck ethics. I guess. >:/

/derailing


theepistler
May 6 2017, 17:02:42
They're... kind of not good at stamping out unnecessary cruelty over there, from what I've seen. :(


dinogrrl
May 7 2017, 00:33:35
Basically all the vets* I've worked for who've done those types of procedures know it's wrong and really aren't terribly fond of doing random unethical cosmetic procedures on animals, and thus they don't openly advertise that they even do them. We just haven't been able to get it passed into law yet, though I'm hoping it'll start happening at a state-by-state level in the near future (I think New York is getting close, or was at one time).

I say 'basically all the vets' because...yeah, those ones who did the puppies. 8| I'll leave it at that, otherwise we'll end up with an essay about my amazingly fun-filled time working for those two.


theepistler
May 7 2017, 09:16:53
Well now I'm depressed. :(


Anonymous
May 7 2017, 02:04:20
It also reminds me of what snake charmers do to their snakes.
-TTT


vorpal_tongue
May 6 2017, 19:06:48
I’m having a hard time accepting that this thing was written by a woman right now. Just… ugh.

I can believe it whole-heartedly. Gender has little value in terms of what one is capable of in this sort of thing.

I can also believe whole-heartedly that this is probably going to be the most epic battle in the cosmos; will The Epistler be able to finish this trilogy in time, and live to see a new day, or will the abortive abominations crafted from the screaming souls of tortured trees drive them into an alcoholic-driven death, sending their soul onto a boat adrift upon the rivers of whiskey they consumed in their bid to drive a spork through the eyes of these bastard books?


theepistler
May 6 2017, 19:23:45
I can believe it whole-heartedly. Gender has little value in terms of what one is capable of in this sort of thing.


Okay, I'll concede that. Honestly, the worst misogyny I've ever read was written by women. Stephenie Meyer and E.L.James, I'm looking at you right now.

I can also believe whole-heartedly that this is probably going to be the most epic battle in the cosmos; will The Epistler be able to finish this trilogy in time, and live to see a new day, or will the abortive abominations crafted from the screaming souls of tortured trees drive them into an alcoholic-driven death, sending their soul onto a boat adrift upon the rivers of whiskey they consumed in their bid to drive a spork through the eyes of these bastard books?

My heart is true and my resolve (and liver) are as iron! And when all else fails my dear friend Mr Whiskey Bottle has my back every time.


tt_7
May 8 2017, 01:07:20
What about rum? Or shandy? ;)


Anonymous
May 12 2017, 08:30:44
Can we please have a fantasy novel in which Dead Parents aren’t the protagonist’s main motivation?

To go archetypal, The Lord of the Rings. :p

The protagonists and secondaries do have a few dead parents between them, but no drama about it nor it even being of import. Then again all of those
orphaned are adults by the time they appear, so maybe that doesn't count?


theepistler
May 12 2017, 10:55:38
The Dead Parents motivation is generally used on characters when they're still children. The adult equivalent is Dead Wife and Daughter (it's always a
daughter. If it's a son, he always survives and Dad has to find him again as a grizzled adult).

In both cases it's a device meant to destroy everything the protagonist holds dear, while giving them the impetus to leave home because there's nothing
left for them there except painful memories and now their only reason to draw breath is the prospect of heroic vengeance against the Bad Guys. If I had a
dollar for every time someone trots out this tired old trope, I'd be driving around in a Mercedes Benz.