What Can Stories Do Against Evil?

How powerless artists can make a difference in the real world

“. . . It was the Worst of Times”

I am so fucking furious right now.

You understand. You are living in the same world I am, with the wonderful and terrible gift that is the information superhighway. We all know the truth. Monsters run the world. They are killing Planet Earth and her inhabitants because they can. Rapists, oligarchs, hypocrites, murderers, and–to quote Logic’s song, “Confess”–the most “evil motherfuckers” we can imagine rule our lives. The situation keeps getting worse. The world burns. Wars perpetuate. Children get hurt. Our minds keep getting ripped apart; our souls get more scarred. There is no relief in this age from facing challenges people from 100 years ago could not have dreamed of, let alone prepared for.

Oh, and do not get me started on the shit stain that is social media, which has irrevocably damaged our spirits with misinformation, judgement, and heinousness that highlights the worst in people. The very fact I know there are readers right now uncomfortably shifting in their seats or clutching their metaphorical pearls because I delivered any criticism at this all-mighty entity is exactly my point. Like a computer virus, the vile sons of a bitches and the ruling oligarchs of this world perpetuate each other.

You know what the worst thing is? We are powerless to bring about change to this world.

Oh, sure, we can boycott; protest; bitch online, like I am doing right now; make pretty speeches at award ceremonies; give a ton of money to charities; put out fires literal and metaphorical; be wiser choosing what corporations we give our money to; vote (though to this point I think The Simpsons had it right: “I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again: democracy simply doesn’t work.”). Really, these actions have not made much difference. Yes, I can hear the optimistic analysts with the data proving me wrong, which is great. Regardless, go check the news and tell me with a straight face that we ordinary people are not playthings of the oligarchs; slaves to the Morgothian Machine. 

Hell, people love brainlessly quoting the Declaration of Independence’s call to overthrow an abusive government, but to say as much in public is taboo. I cannot explain that kind of idiotic hypocrisy. Still, such naked, juvenile revolution will only sow greater sin and suffering. Yet doing nothing is not working, and what people are doing does not seem to be changing a damn thing, at least not in a way that really matters. 

So, we have no options. We are shit out of luck. Working for meager paychecks. Getting sicker. Hearing what is wrong with the world and being encouraged to do something while also being ordered to worry only over what we can control. Fantasizing about stopping evil and . . . 

. . . and here I am, just another writer typing away another meaningless rag. Another powerless story. Another creative project whose potential is so fricking limited it makes me want to weep. If this is all I can do–all we writers can do–then we are well and truly fucked.

“There was Once a Dream that was [Imagination]”

Do you remember the first time you realized one story can change lives for the better, forever? When you wanted to be such a hero? Make your own story that could save people in the same way you were saved? Pass on the gift?

In autumn 2010, thanks to the shortsightedness of my hellish, poor, and unintelligent prison, err, I mean, high school, (a fun fact: years after graduating, I learned my principal was embezzling funds), I received my first laptop computer. Every student got one for educational purposes. We students did what any teenagers given a free ride to the internet would: ran around on our virtual playgrounds. 

At the time, my family had no TV, and our internet was awful. So, I used my laptop at school to watch stuff; often, stuff I knew my mom would not let me see. One such piece was the anime series, Cowboy Bebop–the 26-episode tale about a group of misfit bounty hunters in the year 2076 having misadventures and struggling to confront their haunting pasts. I had seen the iconic opening credits and two scenes from the film and knew the series’ reputation. I was curious to know what all the hullabaloo was about. Suffice to say, without writing a whole book on the sublime, timeless magnificence that is this show, I fell instantly in love with Cowboy Bebop. Before, I was definitely an anime fan (shout out to any Last Exile fans out there), but this series was my gateway to becoming a full-fledged otaku to this day.

I hold Cowboy Bebop so dear to my heart because the series saved my life. Like I said, my Southern high school and the context of my life at the time surrounding that hellscape was driving me insane. I was endlessly bullied; unpopular; a Latino in the Bible Belt, which meant getting routinely asked, “What are you?”, amongst other racist comments; lonely; bored; constantly terrified. In freshman year, there was already an incident of extreme bullying where I screamed at my tormentors, “I will fucking kill you!” and got in trouble for my grief. 

My mind was slipping. I felt on the verge of something horrible I could never undo. Either I was going to hurt myself or I was going to hurt someone else if there was no relief.

Getting into the drama club saved me. Participating in an online geeky community helped me. Listening to the audiobooks of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series after school with my siblings delivered me. But before I found those, I found Cowboy Bebop, and the show gave me something else to live for. Something else to think about other than my endless misery.

I fell deeply in love with the cast of characters. They became like virtual friends. I adored their stories that proved there was more to life than just the world around me. Yes, high school continued to be my Shawshank Prison, yet no one could take away the crew of the Bebop starship. Spike Spiegel, Jet Black, Faye Valentine, Ed, and their Welsh Corgi, Ein. They were with me when I walked down the halls, when I played the show’s soundtrack, when I felt there was nowhere to go but suicide. My life was never the same because of Cowboy Bebop.

Indeed, because of this series sending my love for anime and manga into the stratosphere, I have met so many people. I have been an annual attendee of the convention, MomoCon, since 2013, which is where I feel the freest and like the best version of myself. There, in 2016, I met Steve Blum, the renowned English voice actor for Spike Spiegel, and, in 2024, Beau Billingslea, the English voice actor for Jet Black. Both occasions were monumental moments for me. 

For when I told Mr. Blum how the show saved my life, he was moved, and said he, too, was bullied relentlessly as a youth. When we parted, he said, “Your words are important, man. Keep saying them.” I had that quote printed over the door of my first office in college. Mr. Billingslea was also so welcoming and supportive of what I had to say, and upon hearing my story he proudly told me, “You beat [high school].” I had not known I needed to hear such confirmation that those dark days were over. He made me feel like one of the Bebop crew.

“. . . But There is No Shelter”

Cowboy Bebop, like so many enormously influential works of art, gave me a whole new direction in life. Prior, I had wanted to create stories for, more or less, the supposed fortune and glory. Now, I want to create stories that can continue to pass on the gift stories like Cowboy Bebop gave me during some of my darkest times: the light of hope. To remind people they are not alone or stupid, to brighten their days when they need to laugh or escape or find peace. Stories, I learned, had the power to change lives for the better, and thus, this creed became my purpose.

Then 2020 arrived. Though I suspect my disillusionment began earlier.

We all remember the laundry list of awful things that happened during that year. But what shook me the most was the slow realization that my belief that stories would save us was wrong. The plague, the dying, the corruption, the disasters, the continuing sins visited upon children. No story, painting, music, or art stopped them in 2020. No inspiring speech, powerfully written passage, angelic singing, gorgeous sculpture, heart-wrenching painting, or act of creativity saved us. 

I shattered. How could I have been wrong? I was living proof that stories saved lives! I had seen so much evidence that art could save the world! Why did art abandon us? I was not naïve enough to think that, say, a printed and bound book could stop a war, but I knew that . . . that . . .

Yet stories did not stop anything bad that year. Fast-forward to 2025, and the world has continued being awful and slowly dying. Again, you know exactly the horrors I am referring to. In this world based on ruthless capitalism, the only thing that seems to create change is money, and most of us don’t have it. What is the spectacular Wicked film against that coño who bought Twitter? Has Gil-Scott Heron’s music made a crack against the wall of evil we are all intimate with? 

I remain a personal mess, despite how miraculously Cowboy Bebop saved me. All I see now is how we can do nothing except listen to rich talk show hosts make jokes about our problems. Our righteous anger goes nowhere, becoming pitiful despair, and nothing gets done.

So, as a writer with no money and little influence, how can I practically aid the cause of good? 

“Endure and Survive”

Maybe I am wrong. I am just one guy, after all, and I still have much to learn about living. 

From what I have seen, I am sorry to report that art cannot stop the bad guys. I cannot think of any creative work that has defeated racist legislation, the steamroller that is capitalism, or the stupid dumbasses who ruin everyone’s lives. I adore Cowboy Bebop, but the series did not stop me from becoming what I am now. Nor can something as relatively meaningless as an anime stop the flood of problems that come our way every day.

Oh, art can help us for a little while. A little escape, a little relief, until we have to return to our grim reality. Boy, when I get obsessed with a story, I feel like a hundred bucks. When I discover a new song, I cannot wait to belt out the tune in my car. I fill my office space with visual art that stirs my heart, and, gazing upon them, for a few seconds I am free.

They are beautiful distractions. But if art could really change the world, it would have done so already. We would not be trapped in catastrophe after catastrophe. Money rules this world, and the spoiled few have the power to keep our world running into the ground. Look at our shared reality. No anime is going to stop evil, keep you fed, or cure what ails you. 

The bitter truth is that in the grand scheme of things, I am pretty sure we are powerless.

“This Pain Wouldn’t be for Evermore”

Now, I can write until the sun sets and rises about how what I just said is only PART of the truth. There is, in fact, real power, grace, and honor in storytelling and making art. Stories do save lives, and no negativity can undo the fact that Cowboy Bebop and so many other works of art have rescued me in ways great and small. Make no mistake: art makes life better. As Chester Bennington of Linkin Park once sang in the tune, “One More Light,” I do care if one more light goes out. So, if a story can save a single life, the work has done its job.

What I struggle to resolve is the problem that art can only go so far in changing the world. I have done much soul-searching on the topic because I am finding writing more difficult lately considering as I type these words that there are children imprisoned and in danger just for being “different”; that known rapists and the most selfish, unkind bastards own us; and I am pretty sure my life–the one Cowboy Bebop saved–is not getting any better.

The important part of the truth hit me during the maelstrom of the first months of 2025. I was overcome with a wrathful need for revenge against a living monster I learned had once committed unspeakable harm to someone I hold dear. The details are not important. All you need to know is I was so injured and traumatized by what I learned that I began planning how to deservedly hurt this human being in ways suitable only for an HBO show. I never had this urge come over me before, not even in high school, and I did not know what to do about it.

Then, I remembered Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi tossing his lightsaber aside, refusing to kill Darth Vader, his father who had done so much wrong to him and had promised to do so again. “Revenge,” I told myself like the geeky kid I still am, “is not the Jedi way.” I had to remember that I had chosen to be a Jedi at the tender age of four, and must stick to my creed lest I lose myself to the dark side as Luke had nearly done. 

Ridiculous, I know. Geeky nonsense that does not stop the pain I am still feeling from this personal situation. Nevertheless the incident got me to understand that stories do change the world . . . just slowly. Very, very slowly. 

Like evolution across the epochs of this planet, society changes at a turtle’s pace. But that turtle, perpetuated by the lessons we learn–including our takeaways from art–never stops moving forward. Ideas change people, cultures, and the world bit by bit. Until, one fine day, we finally notice how things have changed for the better.

I believe Captain Benjamin Sisko of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in the episode “Far Beyond the Stars” said it best: “You can pulp a story but you cannot destroy an idea! Don’t you understand? That’s ancient knowledge! You cannot destroy an idea . . . It’s real!” Art and stories are ideas made manifest, and ideas are infectious. They work their way into us, day by day, year by year, until they change our hearts and minds. We change from our experiences and what we learn, which includes a life-changing novel, a powerful television series, an unforgettable film, or a comic book you re-read again and again. 

Eventually, you find yourself able to understand what is right and what is easy; how to make it through the hardest times; why you choose mercy over violence; that people who are “different” are just like us; and the part you CAN play in bringing humanity just that little bit closer to better days.

“Bang”

Art comforts us and shelters us. Makes us happy for the simple, fantastically pointless sake of just being happy. When it comes to fighting the evil of this world, art and stories change people’s minds step by step. Maybe not fast enough to deal with priority problems, but as Paul Chadwick would say in his comic book series, Concrete, we writers have to think like a mountain: long-term and patiently. I do not believe any of us will see a day when the ripples our stories have made make a marked difference in the world, though stranger things have happened. But we are planting more seeds in this forest of change, as wide as the globe and as high as the clouds.

I mean, without Cowboy Bebop, I may not have lived long enough to write to you right now. One hundred years ago, a Latino like me would not even be allowed to speak in this way to you. The world changed because of courageous, trailblazing actions of those who first heard this whisper from stories: “Things can and should be better, and here is how.” Because of art, imagine what the world can be like in 100 more years, regardless of the worst evil forces can do?

Here is a small example of what I mean. The awesome Star Wars TV show, Andor, a story about rebelling against the evil Galactic Empire, will not stop the oligarchs on Earth. The show will not inspire passionate anger and righteous upheaval of our overlords. This show, sadly produced by one of the oligarch companies corrupting our lives, is partially a sham–a comforting fantasy for us to pretend we are participating in revolution from the useless seats of our couches.

But still, Andor has and will get people talking about fighting against real-world evil. Remind us why we are so damn angry; that we should not stop being mad until everyone is safe from the two-headed beast of government and corporations. Prove to us that even amongst the overwhelming responsibility of surviving everyday life ourselves, we can still do our parts, together, wherever we are, no matter how small, to fight back at what these assholes order us to accept. Heck, the recent and awe-inspiring season 2 trailer is one of the reasons I wrote this piece.

Good stories will keep whispering in our ears, “Things can and should be better, and here is how.” The ideas in the tales that really matter to people will not vanish from their minds. Ideas are infectious, after all.

Your stories CAN change the world for the better, and, by the clockwork of the universe, will come together with other flickers of light from the corners of the Earth to defeat the enemies of humankind. Word by word. Page by page. Heart by heart.

Ready to create a story that is powerful enough to change hearts and minds, causing a ripple effect that can change the world? OBA Media is here to be your partner through the writing journey! We’ve got a few spots for a FREE consult left—we’ll help you get your story in fighting shape.

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🎧PODCAST SNEAK PEAK 👀

This week, we embraced childhood innocence by becoming blanket burritos and talking about Disney’s The Lion King, showing you how you can write timeless coming-of-age stories. Watch your early release of the full episode here.

Hakuna Matata Lied to Us