#Iirc egregious went through the same thing literally did

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

this will never not be funny to me

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Okay so the Lizard stuff in ASM v5 #2 really bugged me as I stated when the issue came out, and it has continued to bug me a lot since then, but I did take a step back to consider some things and went so far as to refresh my memory of Shed, No Turning Back and every Lizard appearance story since then (all of which bar one, were written by Slott) to give myself perspective. I also re-read ‘The Child Within’ by DeMatteis and Buscema and skimmed ‘the Death of Vermin’ also by DeMatteis and Buscema because I felt they were relevant to the topic at hand.

 So I have SOMEWHAT changed my mind on my initial reactions to the Lizard stuff from ASM v5 #2, partially because I got some perspective and partially because I went through the painful process of returning to those previously mentioned Lizard stories (of which I will begrudgingly admit ‘No Turning Back’ by Slott...isn’t that bad, I know no one was more shocked than me).

So my beef was how nonchalant Peter and everyone else was over the Lizard teaching at ESU and also how chill Connors himself was. I wasn’t going to just go by the logic of ‘well they were written that way before under Slott so it’s consistent’ because Slott of course was notoriously bad at characterization. Case in point Spider-Man 100% made a joke/casual comment about the Lizard eating people in Clone Conspiracy #3 as he did in ASM v5 #2.

 This was to me, and I 100% stand by this, totally out of character in both instances because...he’s joking about cannibalism and subtextually joking about the cannibalism of an innocent child, an innocent child whom he knew personally .*

 Which is a great big egregious NO in your chyaracterization of Peter Parker. I despise ‘Shed’ passionately but whatever else you want to say about it, Spidey’s abject horror of Billy’s death in that story was totally true to his character and an important part of that story, that story itself (however anyone wants to feel about it) being an important story in the history of the Lizard. I feel about ‘Shed’ the same kind of way I feel about the Clone Saga (except I like parts of the Clone Saga). Maybe you don’t like it, maybe it was bad for the characters, but it’s so important to their histories you can’t just ignore it.

 Having Peter joke about the Lizard an cannibalism is very much ignoring the single most infamous part of the most well known Lizard story ever (besides his debut issue and Torment by McFarlane). It would be akin to Spider-Man ignoring the fact that he believed himself to be a clone or in fact being insensitive to someone because they were a clone (which he was to Kaine actually in Spider-Island).

 In ‘the Child Within’ Spider-Man also showed horror and disgust over the fact that Edward Whelan/Vermin, had also literally eaten people.

 If Spider-Man is going to show horror and disgust over someone he doesn’t know literally eating other people he doesn’t know, why would he ever joke about someone he does know personally (Curt Connors) eating someone else he knows personally (Billy, a child he’s tried to protect multiple times)?

 Answer: this was a moment where Spencer did I am afraid drop the ball badly. But you know...happens to the best writers. Let’s not sit here and pretend Stan Lee himself didn’t make major screw ups. Hell J.M. DeMatteis and Roger Stern, two of the greatest Spider-Man writers ever, made missteps. Heck we’re talking about ‘the Child Within’, that’s a story where I think DeMatteis made a big mistake in his characterization of Spider-Man himself, one that cuts to the heart of the character in a way bigger way than this moment from Spencer. He’s still one of the elite Spider-Man writers though and still (with DeFalco) my fav ever.

  I have however changed my mind on the matter of Connors himself being so chill with his life situation and with the wider ESU staff and student body and the idea  of Spider-Man himself accepting Connors.

 So I said I wasn’t going to just blithely run by the logic of ‘well this is what it was like under Slott so it’s consistent’, but it is important to remember Connors accepted his own guilt in Slott’s run and didn’t try to shy away from imprisonment despite having the option to. He was however, even before Clone Conspiracy, not the kind of broken man you’d imagine anybody who’s child was so horrifically murdered (by their own hands...let alone own mouth) would be like.

 After Clone Conspiracy this could ARGUABLY make sense though. Connors as man who lost everything important to him, his arm, his faith in humankind (see Spider-Man Unlimited #19), his home, his career, his humanity and his family (mostly all due to the same thing, being the Lizard) could very well cling to any given opportunity to in some shape or form reclaim his family and then by extension everything else.

 This is why I think, like so many people in Clone Conspiracy, he embraced what was clearly just a new cloning process as a form of resurrection. He was so desperate for Billy and Martha to be alive again and for them to be a family that he either didn’t question it or pushed aside the rationale conclusion that these were merely clones not the genuine articles.

 So in having them back it in a sense allowed him to cope with, heal from, move on from, or do whatever psychologically to NOT be a broken man over eating his own son. To him, even though it’s not actually the case, his greatest sin has been undone and he’s even had a hand in ‘making it right’ because he was the one who figured out how to stabilize their conditions and prevent them from dying at the end of Clone Conspiracy.

 In making them Lizard people like him (although that already happened to Billy anyway, but nevermind) it equally mighty have alleviated the fact that he was himself trapped in the body of an inhuman monster. He had his family back and bonus, now they were like him, now he no longer needed to worry about hurting them when he transformed both because he the human was in control but also they were fellow reptiles now. He wasn’t the man with the monster inside him who might destroy his family, they were all monsters together now.

 Had he compromised his wife and son’s humanity to get there? Sure but they were alive and together and that desire within Connors was possibly so strong that he essentially wilfully denied that he’d turned them into monsters. I am loathe to give Slott credit for this and I might be overextrapolating but this could very well be why in Clone Conspiracy Omega when Lizard Zombie Billy is eating his plate and Lizard Zombie Martha is struggling to talk beyond a grunt whilst pouring water all over the table Connors is just nonchalant and content. He’s in denial because he is so desperate for his family to be back in any form. Potentially he might also be thinking he could get out a more permanent cure for all of them later.

 From there the fact that he has his arm back, has the chance at a career and public opinion is more favourable towards him ever since he helped Mayor Jameson back in Superior (likely a contributor to the job he got at ESU) from his warped desperate perspective he’s gotten back a lot of the stuff that he lost. He might even enjoy the power of being the Lizard whilst still being in control (in ASM #43 he DID suggest that the Lizard could defeat the Rhino). Even if that wasn’t the case with the inhibitor chip enables him to switch back and forth anyway.

 This I think is the most logical explanation for why Connors in more recent stories hasn’t been the broken man he should have been in the wake of ‘Shed’.** You could also argue that he is forgiving himself somewhat because ‘the Lizard did it not me’, although I find this less believable.

 Regarding the ESU staff and students, they seem chilled out with him but equally I must now admit we don’t hear THAT much from them in the issue anyway so for all we know they’re just getting on with the situation and not saying or doing anything to express their potential horror and discomfort over being in the same room as a cannibal. Plus he did state he hadn’t been in Lizard form the whole time, just for the sake of that experiment on that day.

If Mayor Jameson was forgiving of him, if the authorites gave him a second chance, if they gave Vermin/Edward Whelan a second chance and he seems like a nice guy I guess it stands to reason that college students, who tend to be on the more Liberal and accepting side of life (not dissing that just and observation) would probably give him a shot, especially if cannibalism isn’t brought up much or if they didn’t know about that. Also realistically you’d imagine in the Marvel Universe greater emphasis and efforts would be made from the student body of a NYC based university to be respectful towards mutants and that likely would extend to mutates like Curt Connors. That’d just be a reflection I think of how a lot of modern colleges act, although there was an anti-mutant sentiment in some old ESU Spidey stories IIRC.

 Finally we come to Spider-Man himself being so forgiving towards Curt Connors. I stand by how OOC it was for Peter to make a joke about Connors history with cannibalism but having refreshed my memory of all the above mentioned stories I am big enough to admit that I was somewhat mistaken and wasn’t thinking things through.

 I think I was letting the elephant that was Shed blind me to the character’s individual and shared histories together and equally my disdain of Slott’s run led to me not revisiting his stories much, thus certain details of them slip my mind moreso than with yarns I like (e.g. the JMS run).

 Again, I didn’t want to approach this topic with the mentality of ‘Well it was like this under Slott so it’s consistent so it’s okay’, because again Slott’s characterization was notorious. HOWEVER even a broken clock is right twice a day and in his run Spider-Man clearly (mostly) demonstrated an attitude that Connors was not himself to be blamed for the actions of the Lizard and he demonstrated a certain forgiving attitude towards him too. In ASM #699 the Peter inside Doc Ock’s dying body even wants to free the Lizard, though he wonders if this is due dying affecting his thinking.

 This is consistent with Spidey’s attitude towards Connors/the Lizard going right back to the Silver Age. But I thought you know...infanticide and cannibalism are different ball games, would Spidey extend the ‘Connors is not to blame for the Lizard’s actions’ mentality to something like that?

 That’s why I read ‘the Child Within’ and ‘The Death of Vermin’. A human being who was turned into a half human/half animal monster as a manifestation of internal psychological issues who also engaged in violence and cannibalism? Obvious grounds for comparison and as a bonus Vermin’s character was created and defined by DeMatteis, who is one of Spencer’s biggest influences on Spider-Man.

 So in reading those stories, Spidey does At FIRST take a merciless attitude towards Vermin, precisely due to his cannibalism, but it’s also implied it’s due to the association of Vermin and his trauma over being buried alive as well as one of Vermin’s abilities just bringing out darker, unpleasant impulses in those around him; psychic poison as it’s called.

 However as both stories clearly demonstrate, at the end of the day Peter does pity Vermin, doesn’t regard him as a monster but as a victim of both Baron Zemo and his own mental illnesses. In ASM #403 (again by DeMatteis) when Edward Whelan is transformed back into Vermin Spider-Man expresses dismay because he’d come so far.

 So actually yeah Spider-Man would totally forgive Connors, totally embrace working with him and be sympathetic towards him. He just wouldn’t have joked about Billy and I hope desperately that we WILL bring up the fate of the Connors family later since last Peter checked they would’ve died in Clone Conspiracy.

  However my reading actually uncovered a few other problems and inconsistencies. The biggest ones being that Peter is shocked and scared in ASM v5 #2 that the Lizard is anything other than Connors in control considering that last he checked that was the Lizard’s status quo. Even if you argue that Peter doesn’t have the memories of the Peter who died in Otto’s body back in ASM #700 (who first learned Connors was in control of the Lizard’s body) he clearly knew that Connors was in control back in Clone Conspiracy, Connors outright told him that. So...why is he reacting like he doesn’t know that?

 Again, it seems like Spencer dropped the ball here. The scene would’ve worked fine in like the default setting for the Lizard/Connors from the old pre-Shed days but it doesn’t line up with very recent stories, Clone Conspiracy was after all as recent as 2017 and a major event.

 In the same vain it doesn’t really make sense for the inhibitor chip to be a plot device in this story because again, the Lizard’s persona was ‘killed’ back in No Turning Back. Connors had been in control of the Lizard’s body for YEARS (in-universe and in the real world) by the time we got to ASm v5 #2 so why is the story and Connors acting like he’s got this new gadget to enforce control of the Lizard body and prevent him from changing?

 Not to mention how did the authorities get a hold of him in the first place, wasn’t he on the run last we saw him.***

 Again, it’s something that’d make total sense at almost any point in the Lizard’s history before 2009, but it doesn’t jive with what we’ve seen most recently.

 Which if you wanna go in this direction I support that, I infinitely think that’s better for the character than the band aid Slott had tried to put over Shed (valiant effort though it was, I begrudgingly give him that) but like...you gotta explain this stuff. This is the entire status quo for a supporting character who’s been around since the Silver Age arbitrarily changing in very noticeable ways with little-no on the page implications as to how.

 I hope Spencer addresses this stuff in the future even though my initial problems barring one no longer bug me. 

*ASM #365 Peter and MJ attended Billy Connors’ birthday party. This isn’t a small obscure thing to overlook because ASM #365 was one of (arguably the main) story celebrating Spider-Man’s 30th anniversary, complete with a Master Planner homage. The Parker/Connors family friendship appeared in other stories both before and after that issue too so every writer should be aware Spidey knows Billy somewhat personally. 

**As for why he didn’t seem like....WAY more upset prior to Clone Conspiracy I think you could even explain that one away as him knowing intellectually that the Lizard killed his son but it was at the moment that the Lizard struck the killing blow that Connors ‘died’ as it were. His thought captions actually back this up in Shed as they literally rip in half. So although Connors KNOWS he/the Lizard killed Billy he might not have remembered or ever actually seen or experienced it himself.

Like he blacked out just as it was happening, meaning he wouldn’t retain anything in his memories of the experience to actually traumatise him. He might not even know that the Lizard literally ate his son, just that he killed him in general.

If you go with this idea then him being upset and feeling he deserves to be punished as we saw in  No Turning Back, ASM #699, No Escape (from Superior) and a few other appearances prior to Clone Conspiracy makes more sense. He is obviously upset, he is obviously devastated but he just isn’t broken. Not that Slott or anyone communicated that very well, but they also didn’t make him seem like he definitely WASN’T that either, he just didn’t talk much except to admit he was punishing himself or to save Jameson’s life. 

***Also Peter in No Turning Back claims that really it was Curt Connors who was the evil behind the Lizard all along. Let’s ignore ‘A Lizard’s Tale’, that horrible Paul Jenkins Lizard story which claimed Connors had always been in control. This line of dialogue from Slott doesn’t really make sense however you want to interpret it. If you interpret it as Spidey saying the Lizard was a manifestation of Connors’ inner negativity it doesn’t make sense because...he already knew that from Spider-Man Unlimited #19. But if you interpret it as Connors was actually himself at fault for the Lizard’s actions the whole time (including Billy’s murder) it also makes no sense because Spider-Man totally knows there is a Jekyll/Hyde situation going on there.

[udaitenma]

* (1/2) Hi! I’m just curious so I decided to ask: I was wondering how big (or small) does your team’s proofreader/editor change with your (or all TLrs of MS) translations. IIRC you mentioned sometimes your TLs were changed or some were even omitted (like your notes). Sometimes I read different interpretations/translations of the dialogues from other fans (as well as other MS projects like TG) with explanations. I heard that MS is more liberal when it comes to their TLs (or so they say?)

* (2/2) But I’m really grateful with your team’s work. You’re doing the community, the fans great favor of delivering us our favorite manga series for free. I’m just really curious with the process, especially the perspective of the translators (since Japanese is a very context based language). Thank you for reading! (English isn’t my native tongue so I may not express it properly. Sorry. ^^)-Hey - It really depends a lot on the week, the chapter, what I “originally wrote” and if that seemed weird to the proofer, or not. If I’m really unhappy about an edit the proofer makes, I’ll usually salt and ask for it to be changed. (Tbh in the past I used to argue a lot about the Bleach proofing changes when I was on Bleach, and I almost got kicked off the team for that HAHA but yeah we’ve been through a lot of ups and downs.) People always say MS is more “liberal” like it’s a dirty word. I don’t even know if “liberal” should be the correct terminology to describe translation style. In my opinion, taking unwarranted liberties with the translation and making shit up is not what a translator should do. However, translating everything word for word is just as egregious. It loses out on the nuance of the text, loses out on the way a character is portrayed, and loses out on how emotions are conveyed in the new language, if everything is translated word for word to the original text. It sounds unnatural, and it’s a lazy and unskillful way for a translator to do their work. People get so sanctimonious when translating and they say the do the translation literally, but too literal a translation and that just shows a shallow understanding of the base language they are translating from in my opinion. 

Like if I were translating French and I had written “and my ass is made of chicken”, I’m sure that’s really hilarious but it’s only going to be fully appreciated by the people who understand that it’s the french way of calling out someone on a lie - sure, it will make them feel great that they got the “in joke” and understood what the “original text” was, but the “English” way of saying it would be something more like “yeah and pigs are flying”. There is also a Japanese saying that can be translated to ‘a man like fresh split bamboo’. Do you want the Japanese in a translation note, and for the translator to ask the readers to go and google it? If people want to learn a language by reading literally translated text, they are better off actually opening a text book and learning the language rather than getting a language boner every time a Japanese translation satisfies their ego that they understand the original text or whatever.

See here in Haikyuu 241, “chance truly does, favour the prepared mind” is the common english phrase.

The FA version is an attempt at a word-for-word literal translation of the Japanese raws. If you wanted to know how this universally very common phrase is said in Japanese, you should go and pick up a textbook and start studying Japanese. If you liked the FA version because you could learn what the Japanese for it is,.. you should… go and pick up a textbook and start studying Japanese. A professional translation should not sound so awkward and janky imo. 

I used to be more of a “literal” translator, but I guess I’ve slowly shifted my style a bit. The reasons for this is twofold.  One is undeniably a little bit related to the proofing - too literal, and I know it’ll definitely get changed, so I try to make it sound better in English (like natural English) in the first place so I can ensure it’s correct and that it won’t get changed into something that has a chance of being incorrect/compromising the nuance and feel of the sentence. Secondly, I have come to realise that it’s a waste of Japanese ability to translate everything word for word. It’s also important to be able to capture the nuance of a sentence, make sure it doesn’t sound janky or unnatural in english, and make the experience of reading a chapter immersive - as immersive as it would have been if people were able to read the original text. I want to have style when translating - if I wanted to get a literal translation, I’d just shove the whole thing into google translate. 

Some things that the proofer will edit, is for example, if you remember last week there was the sentence “cool as a pillow”. Now, that phrase is not really in my vernacular. Maybe the proofer honestly says it, or maybe he just wanted to spice things up a bit, I’m not sure. I am not a big fan of the phrase he used, and I understand that people want to know what the Japanese text actually said in this circumstance. I originally did only write “calm” in the text file. However, stuff like this part here in 243 this week:

He says “nice game” in the original, but I felt like if he spoke English, he would say ‘good game’ as that is a more common phrase in natural sounding english than ‘nice game’. The word ‘nice’, as in ‘naisu!’ is something that has found it’s way into the Japanese language, and used a bit differently in certain cases to what is natural in English. You also know the phrase ‘gg’ gamers use? ;D That’s also why I felt this would be more common, if you hc that these guys do know gaming terminology to some extent (if they were English speakers). 

If you want to compare some bubbles between MS and FA scans (tbh I’m not a fan of the FA translations as they are rn, I miss the casanova translator :( but I went through their scan for you

My translation: It sounds more natural to me that when speaking to a friend, you’d make the language flow with the use of the word “over” and so forth.

FA version - missing the word “over”, but nbd.

My translation: In Japanese, using the person’s name could easily just mean “you”, but I thought I’d include the ‘Daichi’ here. I wanted to convey the nuance and flow of the sentences so it reads well in English too. I don’t feel that I sacrificed the original Japanese meanings, and I did my best to maintain the natural conversational tone and flow. I used “came to our match” to clarify, in the original Japanese it just says “Tashiro-san and Kurokawa-kun came!” which lacks a marker indicating where they “came to” - it’s very obvious by context and sounds natural in Japanese, but sounds unnatural in English to just end a sentence like that.

FA Translation - You can see that they clarified by saying “tashiro and kurokawa are here” instead of “came to the match” which works too. Different choice of working, works too.

My translation:

FA translation:

Again, same deal.

These aren’t the proofer’s doing, these are my choices for what I think sounds most natural and smooth in English.

As for the other discrepancies, like Lazyshima vs Tiredshima, as I’ve talked about last week… well, I don’t like to say this because think it’s in bad taste for me as a translator to badmouth other translations and call them out on their mistakes for no real reason (and I honestly can’t be bothered) but those are FA’s mistakes, to put bluntly. Same for “past students” vs “old boys”, the raws say “old boys”. I was actually tossing between OB and Alumni, but I think the use of the word “old boys” as a direct translation doesn’t lose out when it’s sounded in english - as in it doesn’t sound super weird or janky since ‘old boys’ is a thing in English too - so I just left it as is, direct from the raws.

If you see the display board page this week with all the school’s names - there are discrepancies there too between the two versions, because there is more than one way to read the Kanji. There are many alternatives per place name. That page probably took me the longest to translate,  because I spent a long time considering each of the different readings, and choosing what was the most common and likely reading and gave a lot of thought into it - I hope that pays off, and if there is clarification on the readings in hiragana in future chapters, I hope I could give people the right reading the first time, despite how insignificant that board is.

Another example you can see discrepancies is the chapter title for this week:

sorezore no shosen, and FA has put “the other first matches” or something like that but ‘sorezore’ doesn’t really mean ‘the other’, it means ‘each/respectively’. Nothing in the word ‘sorezore’ could mean ‘other’. Not in the dictionaries, and not colloqually/contextually. Furthermore, even based off context, I think this chapter focuses on not only fukurodani and nekoma’s first matches, but also the wrapping up of karasuno’s first match and some insight into their match - so I wouldn’t translate the title as ‘other’. I would say this was a mistranslation. but I’m going to leave it there now because this could go on forever and I don’t want to just trash FA’s translations. 

To wrap it up - there’s no real way to definitely explain to what extent a translation is liberal, or literal, or which is better, etc. I can tell you too liberal is bad, too literal is also bad. I try to not to be google translation simulator 2.0 - so I do my best to make sentences flow and convey the nuance for an immersive and authentic reading experience (yes, newsflash, you can have an wholesome, different authentic reading experience without having the sentence being word for word translated from the Japanese to please the ego of people who want to feel like they know Japanese without actually putting in the hours and effort to consult a textbook)  .If the proofer changes too much, I will do my best to ask it to be changed. FA goes too literal in my opinion, but their translation has the bare bones and there is a demographic that do enjoy that particular style. However, because I’ve read the raws, I can tell you it’s not like the literal translators don’t have their liberal moments when the inspiration hits. It’s not really fair to ask a translator to explain exactly how literal/liberal their translations are - it’s honestly best to just learn the language yourself, get fluent, and judge for yourself. I know a good translation when I see one, as well as the fact that I can see laziness and mistakes when I see one - but it’s a bit difficult to exhaustively explain. 

Anyway, sorry this got so long. This is why it took me a while to reply, because I had to think of a response and set aside the time to write it! But I’m grateful for your interest and appreciate your support. Thank you, I hope you keep an eye on all the translations and enjoy the story.