There is a theme in literature of a “death list”. The idea is that the act of adding someone’s name to a list in a book or on a piece of parchment condemns that person to death.
This idea pops up in works as disparate as Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado and Tsugumi Ohba’s Death Note. But today it occurred to me that there could be interesting variations.
For example, this afternoon I went on Wikipedia to see what famous people were born on this day. I got to one entry in particular, and found that I had a strong urge to delete it.
“Imagine,” I thought to myself, “If I could just remove this one name from the list, then that particularly destructive person would never have been born. Think how much better off we would all be right now.”
Alas, as far as I know there is no such superpower. But it would make a great idea for an operetta or a Japanese manga, wouldn’t it?