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She shivers in the wind like the last leaf on a dying tree. I let her hear my footsteps.

I rewatched the intro to Sin City, a movie that’s almost old enough to drink in the States. I remember it made quite an impression on me, back then. I’d rewatched it over and over, immersed myself in the gritty world, marveled at the art direction, the visual storytelling. I read the graphic novel, cover to cover. Then I forgot about it for years at a time.

A random YouTube video brought it back, and I rewatched the intro. In it, Josh Hartnett’s character, revealed at the end to be a killer for hire, seduces and dispatches a woman in a red dress in under three minutes.

As with many memories, I was hesitant to rewatch it, for fear it would turn out weaker than I remembered, spoiling my evening and soiling my memory.

I was lucky. It held up great, in all its stylized, pulpy, fan-servicing glory. It’s the over-the-top narration for me, the quintessential expression of noir.

Re-reading some narration from The Silent Season immediately after, I could see the echoes clearly. It’s as if the film and graphic novel had sat buried deep in my subconscious for twenty years, quietly guiding my fingers as I wrote narration and monologues.

Does Silent Season Michael strive to show empathy to his targets because I thought that would be interesting, or is he channeling Josh Hartnett’s character from a film that’s twenty years old? Is there a difference?

I wonder what other influences the editing process will unearth.