I am looking for examples of (pop) cultural events/releases that were delayed or cancelled because an unforeseeable event eerily echoed their content in some way.

For instance, I just discovered that Kylie Minogue's 6th album 'Impossible Princess' was delayed by almost a year because Princess Diana died just before its planned release in 1997 (obviously because of the proposed title).

What other cultural creations suffered similar setbacks because of absolutely unpredictable circumstances (so-called 'Black Swan' events)? Three others that came to mind were:

• Nintendo's recent delay of 'Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp' for the Switch because of the war in Ukraine.

• The infamous summer 2001 trailer for Spiderman depicted a helicopter suspended between the World Trade Towers. This scene then, quite possibly because of the events of 9/11, never made it into the final movie.

• And a more obscure one... the recall and reissue of UK Indie band The Bluetones' single 'Cut Some Rug', because the artwork depicted a classroom emptying... an image that then eerily echoed the tragic school shooting at Dunblane school in 1996.

All four of these examples are because of a serious, tragic event taking place that strangely echoed their proposed content. These are the kind of things I am thinking about, though they need not necessary be considered 'tragic' to count.

The form of the story permeates every aspect of our cultural life. History, politics, memories, even subjectivity, our sense of identity, are all representations in narrative form, signifiers chained together in temporal, spatial, and causal sequence. Narrative is a component of those deep structures with which we construct ourselves and our universe; true stories through which, in the manner of certain Aboriginal legends, the world is dreamed into existence. Narrative appears to be as universal and as old as language itself, and enjoys with language the status of a defining characteristic of humanity and its culture. A people without stories seems as absurd an idea as a people without language, (a people with language but no stories even stranger, for what is language for if not to tell stories?)

Over the past few years there has been a tremendous investment in the idea of digital media, the use of computers as the site of culture rather than just tools for business or science. This

Dresden Codak's handy comic-chart of '42 Essential Third-Act Twists' for writers.