Cross-linguistically, ‘intend’ accepts nonfinite and subjunctive complements but rejects indicative ones. This is a problem for recent theories of mood choice. I propose: (i) intention reports have causally self-referential content (à la Searle 1983), (ii) encoding such content requires abstraction over the complement clause’s eventuality argument, and (iii) nonfinite and subjunctive clauses enable such abstraction but indicative clauses do not (cf. Portner 2018: 117). This proposal, which is meant to supplement rather than supplant existing theories of mood choice, is supported by a range of independent evidence, and implies that a full theory of mood choice must take into account the (non-)presence of eventuality abstraction.