More I think about it, the more I am certain the rules governing the Realms of Imagination favor no one! I mean, why end the dream right then! We could have learned something from the prisoners! Maybe we could have actually done some real good! At least apologize for everything that had happened! But nope, we were waking up. And Trick and Naomi rushed straight for the bathrooms. I had a bad taste in my mouth.

I went into the kitchen to get a soda as the sun began shining through the windows. Conturbatio followed me.

“How did the operation go,” he asked me.

“Well…” Where was I supposed to begin?

I decided that a guy like the Sphinx wouldn’t mind if I just launched right into the whole story and gave him as many juicy details as I could. So I did. And for once, I had a pretty enraptured audience. He nodded a lot and asked clarifying questions, but he did not press for much until I was done. And I had a lot more to tell than what I have written here! I had to omit some stuff for time purposes.

“And then we suddenly woke up! I wonder what that was like for everyone. Did we just wink out of existence or something? I don’t get it.”

“Neither do I,” the Sphinx said. “The Realms might operate a lot like our dreams do, there is no logical reason why we end up where we do, or why things lay out how they do. And since these are supposedly real worlds, they must either exist within this absence of logic, or something must make up the difference.”

“Or right now everyone is wondering where three fugitives just winked to,” I inserted.

“That too,” he said with a chuckle.

The Sphinx then got serious and steepled his fingers. “Ruben, do you believe that our message made it to the Guardians?”

I shrugged and said, “I think it did. We paid a lot of money to do so! But, the attack came almost immediately after Heany sent out our messages to them.”

“Do you think they might have been intercepted by the enemy?”

That gave me pause. I really had no idea. And I told him as much.

“Then we should try again tonight,” The Sphinx told me. “But for right now, we need to get out and about. Make sure you pack some things, though.”

“Huh? Why is that?”

“The Syndicate is very, very proficient at hunting. They might already know that we are here. If not, they might soon learn and surround us. We are in a suburban area, which is not good for us since we do not hold the home field advantage,” the Sphinx explained. “If we go out, it might throw them off a little, it helps take off a little edge and get some fresh supplies. Also, should they decide to besiege the house when we are out, we will be notified when we come back; we’ll be able to spot them.”

I rubbed the side of my face and said, “This is ridiculously stressful. I don’t need to think about this in the morning!”

“Welcome to life on the run.”

“Thanks, I hate it.”

And so we got ourselves ready to go out for a little bit. We made sure to pack some extra clothes and some food in the house, like protein bars and the likes. I needed something much more fresh, and I needed some sugar! Better yet, some caffeine! I’m not sure why I argued for it, but I wanted some fresh doughnuts!

Crazier yet, the others agreed!

We traveled about and eventually came across a quaint, little doughnut cafe. It was clearly a Ma & Pa shop that left you wondering how they managed to stay afloat in and day and age of monstrous conglomerates and fast food chains. But that is an economic matter to consider for another day.

Now, get this, and I swear I’m not making this up, we ran into the writing podcast group Camille’s Harem! Yeah, the Camille’s Harem!

What? You don't know about them? Then let me do a shameless, selfless plug-in! These guys run a podcast by novice writers for novice writers, and they have been a major source of inspiration to me! They consist of members Camille, obviously, Nathan, Lars, Vince, and recent newcomer Scott. They have a unique form of humor which is pretty funny and pleasant. I made sure to quickly get my order of three doughnuts and a large coffee (no funny Starbuck’s names here!), and sat down to listen to them.

This is the best I’ve been able to do to recreate their conversation. They were recording an episode for their podcast on the topic of bad anime tropes that new writers find themselves incorporating into their writing. It went something like this, and I already apologize for any misquoting that happens here!

Lars, wearing his glasses and sporting a My Little Pony T-shirt, leaned over the table and asked, “Is it really okay for us to get started without Scott?”

“Yeah, that jelly doughnut really disagreed with him. Not that there’s anything wrong with this place,” Camille amended loudly. Her slightly messy hair was pulled back, revealing her retro Super Mario shirt.

“Then let’s get into this,” Nate shouted. He was wore a growling tiger hat backwards, and had a Legend of Zelda shirt. Classic Nate! (Yeah, I feel like a creep for saying that. Don’t judge me!) “Hello everyone! Welcome to Camille’s Harem, a podcast for novice writers by novice writers, because writing is an adventure, it’s more fun with friends! And today, we are talking about stupid anime tropes that many novice writers use in their writing.”

He said all of this with a voice that switched through like four different accents, one of them beings an old man with very dusty lungs. At this time, Naomi was trying to pull me over to the counter to make my order, but I pulled away. I was seeing a live recording! What a miracle!

“Can I get us started,” Vince asked. He had his fingernails painted blue, wore his hair long, and wore a shirt reading, ‘It was a Me! Mario!’ “I hate it when the main character is inexplicably attractive to every character while being utterly bland so everyone can project onto them! "My friends are my power!" Shoots biggest laser ever! Inexplicable jumps and leaps in power development. And that one character who is so evil and powerful that people call them "the reaper," but they're handily defeated by the main character/s in the first season!”

Okay, this a long conversation, so I’m shorthanding it!

Camille: And to go off of Vince's first point, the other characters are inexplicably attracted to the main character who is blander than a bowl of old tapioca pudding.

"The power of God and anime on my side!!!"

Nate: Every female character has massive breasts

Vince: Maybe we can just dial that back to "unrealistic body types"

Camille screamed out: THANK YOU!

Because I have never seen any real life human as ripped as the ostensibly 15 - year old Ichigo kurosaki

Or, possibly, the first three JoJos

Nate: VINCE you keep taking all of my ideas!!!

Vince: Jotaro is 17 and has the musculature of a silverback gorilla

Girls/women with bs powers that "require them to be naked"

Like...you can't just wave that one off...the writer made the conscious decision to do that

Nate: Using a tsundere as a way to cover up lazily written characters.

Camille got up and testified while she danced.

Vince: And it might work with the story if handled well, but it often isn't. Also, it's often children

Camille started handing out tens she had written on napkins.

Vince: Foreign characters who can speak perfect Japanese, maybe? Those people exist, but they're much less common then the average folks like myself. The brooding characters who are just dark and extra for no reason.

teleports behind you

"Nothing personnel, kid"

Little girl characters who are infatuated with their big brother

That is my absolute least favorite

Nate: Luckily this one isn't super common, but still WAY to common... Sibling romances. say no to incest, kids!

Vince: Thanks for confirming what I’ve said.

Camille: Especially when the older brother is a perv too

Vince: Oof

Camille: Big yikes

Nate: cough, Araragi! Just! Over-sexualizing characters in any way!

Vince: Any way that doesn't actually use that constructively, I guess

Nate: Yep. Fan service with out a purpose it horrible.

Camille: I can't really think of any reason why children need to be sexualized

Sips tea

Vince: It's possible for characters to be over-sexualized in a way that is actually important to the plot, but like...it usually isn't

Oh of course, children never need to be sexualized. You can say that it happened without showing it if you have a character with a tragic backstory Oh yeah! Bad gore is also unnecessary! Like...where did all that blood come from? That's more intestines than the average person has!

Nate: I've only ever seen fan service used for good in a handful of time, and 90% of those times were in bakemonogatari... and that only makes up my be 1% of all the fan service I've ever seen. Something needs to chance.

Oh. I also hate filler. And believe it or not, people do write that stuff when they realize that they have not fully developed their characters. Here’s a random side quest or random conversation to give my character unearned depth!

Lars who had been up until this point laughing, finally got in on the conversation: Yes! That is terrible. And I’ll admit that I had a hard time with that when I was writing Knights of Halicruz. I had to learn that it was much more rewarding to write the moments of character development in tandem with the action and important conversations. It helps make your story more concise, and it gives your readers a lot more to enjoy and chew on, without dragging things out for too long.

Camille: Noice! I have to bring things back a bit and say that a pet peeves of mine is making someone of a very, very old age look like a child. It's usually done to "justify" the sexualization of that character because "hey! She's actually 450 years old so it's fine"

Nate:Stop giving pointless filler that has nothing to do with anything.

Vince: That's more a problem of the industry

Nate:Looks at fjel... A 700 years old 8 year old... Oops.

Vince: There's no excuse to do that

Nate: But I don't sexualize fjel in my stories. So it works… I hope…

Vince: If you're the writer, you purposely came up with the excuse to make your character a "legal loli." I'm looking at you, Fire Emblem! If she's not sexualized, that's fine!

Camille: There's a tasteful way to handle it, but often I feel it's just used to justify getting off to what is basically a child.

Nate: Also, when I do "sexualize" fjel. She is at an appropriate age.

Vince:If I could be 800 years old but look like a little kid for kicks and giggles, I would!

Nate: Shots fired at my waifu!!!!

Vince: But you don't need to sexualize those characters!

Nate: *accidental waifu, might I add.

Vince: Fire emblem has like... infinite waifus. Just dress the little girl - looking character in sensible clothes!

Nate: Fire emblem, more like... Waifu wars.

Vince: Let's whittle this down: #1. Don't sexualize any character who is or looks like they're under 18

Nate: Key word: LOOK

Vince: #2. Don't sexualize a character because of your own fantasies and then justify it with some in-story garbage.

Nate: What about character who look older than they are?

Vince: They need to be both 18 or up and look that way. If they look older but aren't, don't sexualize them!

Nate: I think #2 is the Crux of the issue.

Vince: Like that character in the MGS game, or hagakure

Nate: MGS?

Vince: Metal gear solid The writers of those stories just wanted to have a mostly naked women in their stories, and wrote that in from that desire. If you want an invisible girl character, you can give her clothes! It's already breaking the laws of physics to have her turn invisible in the first place! Also, the perv characters who objectify women in the story. They're only there because the writer put them there.

Mineta gets punched a lot, but he doesn't get punished in any meaningful way. He gets slapsticked, but not sent to detention because of his actions.

Camille: And the humor aspect is just there to downplay how pervy and unacceptable his actions are

Vince: Exactly, they could keep him around for comedic value without the perving. Brock from Pokemon is kind of a perv, but he's never actually harmful with it. He chases after women, but he doesn't grab them.

Nate: #3 Only use sexualization or fan service when nessisary and as a last resort to get your point across. There are usually better ways.

Camille: I'm just overall uncomfortable with the over sexualization at the expense of (typically) a female's character. Or that her character is nothing more than a sexual object

Lars: Yeah... I hate most fan service moments... Except for when Rem is cooking.

Nate: I Hard that as Ren, and thought of RWBY.

Lars: Yeah, no character should just be a slab of meat. Hahaha!

Nate: #wifemeup

Lars: Ren, too.

Nate: Another, I don't dislike redemption arcs for villians, but it happens all to often and inorganically in (mostly shonen) anime.

Lars: Yeah... So often they are unearned or make no sense! Though I am going to plug in that Esdeath from Akame Ga Kill did not get the ending she deserved.

Camille: You have strange fetishes for blue haired women, my dude. Ooh! Ooh, I also hate (and you see this outside of anime too) the main character falling for the villain with little justification or redemption.

Vince: Yeah, you can't be a villain turned buddy without some serious circumstances. Like literal brain control

Camille: Like, that's something I could never understand in yona of the dawn. People ship yona and the antagonist.....the man who killed her father and took her throne It would make absolutely NO SENSE for her to fall for him. And yet, it's not uncommon to see in romance. The "villain" may not exactly be the main baddie or antagonist, but they're not a very good person and sometimes they don't get the proper redemption before they hook up with the main character.

Nate: with yonas case, it makes sense at the beginning, before he... you know... kills her family. but to continue to do so is just dumb.

Camille: Right, completely different instance with yona. And I think the author did an amazing job at portraying her grief in losing everything but also getting over that asswipe. But the best part is that she completely gets over him and is stronger because of it.

Nate: preach

Camille: CAN I GET A HALLELUJIEHR!?

Lars: Yona is great for doing that, and I'm not even caught up yet!

Camille: Yona is bae

Vince: JoJo's is pretty good with villains turned friends in the Stardust Crusaders arc - the villains who turn good are literally being mind-controlled by Dio, and removing the part of him that controls them turns them against him, naturally

Nate: So it’s more like "enemy of my enemy is my friends" idea?

Vince: It's more like they remove the thought control, and then they're friends

Like "Dio was controlling my actions, and you saved me! Thanks! Time to help you kill Dio and maybe we'll become best buds along the way on this Bizarre Adventure. Part 4 isn't so good, it literally has some really bad mental and emotional abuse by a villain character on a main character she's crushing on. She realizes what she's done and tries to atone for it, which was good, but in the end they're together, which I find unrealistic - even if the abuser tried to make up for what they'd done, I wouldn't be okay with being with them.

Part 5 doesn't really have the villains to buds trope, but part 6 is really bad about it. Part 6 is literally about criminals in prison. One of them is a murderer, and he's a main good guy. Major spoilers! I guess by the end of the part the evil versions of the main characters are disappeared from reality, and they live on as good versions of themselves who never did those bad things, but still.

Parts 1 and 2 don't have the villains to friends trope, except for Speedwagon - he was so influenced by Jonathan's gentlemanly goodness that he went from a street thug to one of the most important forces for good in the whole series!

Alright.. I'm going to stop talking about JJBA now…

Nate: Speedwagon is just such a perfect boy!

Vince: He's the extra most bestest boy.

Nate: That phrase really tickles me. I blame Little Caesar’s.

Vince: I mean I was literally quoting Little Caesar's there.

Nate: I figured as much.

That was when the others finally pried me away, reminding me that I was the one who wanted to come here. I reluctantly went with them and ordered two glazed doughnuts. I like to life dangerously. And there might be some of you out there who are going to ask, especially later, why on Earth I would go through the lengths to try and record their entire conversation. The answer is simple:

These guys do not get enough recognition, and they give excellent advice! For those who read my words, or in this case their’s, it needs to go out there! And inspire other novice writers, such as myself.

I started munching on my doughnuts as I made my way back over to the Harem to continue listening to them. That was when the front door was kicked in.