https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/therealvinelle/692967241218719744?source=share
I must know, monolingual fool that I am, what this says in English.
You do know that I'm going to have to translate this post as well, and it'll be terrible. Last time I spent an hour translating the original post!
For those who don't remember the original Norwegian Bella-post, Bella is Norwegian and hasn't learned English before moving to live with her father in Forks. It's so embarrassing, she refuses to admit this weakness to anybody.
In this AU she decides to just tear the bandaid off, if she doesn't admit to not speaking English she risks her well-intentioned father leaking it instead.
She is as exciting as she could possibly be. Imagine, a true European has come to little Forks! People have a great many questions for her, but the difference from other timelines is that these questions are accompanied by heavy gesturing og repeated slowly, in the hopes that Bella will understand questions posed in a foreign language if the questions are posed more slowly.
"How much English do you know? ENG-LISH, HOW MUCH" is a frequently occurring one.
Mike fights his way through an English-Norwegian dictionary so he can ask Bella if it's true that all Norwegian women are blonde and tall, or if that's just Hollywood.
Tyler asks her questions in Spanish.
Edward, who has met his singer, does not care what language she speaks. He flees to Denali.
A week later he's back, and Bella, who is being followed everywhere by her self-declared English tutor, one Mike Newton, reacts as she did in canon. She finds Edward's return uncomfortable.
Edward, who was so set on talking to her and preparing for that, had forgotten that she doesn't speak English.
"Heisann," Bella answers, the most demonstratively Norwegian greeting she can throw at him.
Edward stares at her in bafflement and only realizes then that the girl doesn't speak English.
And Norwegian happens to be one of the languages Edward doesn't speak.
He knows over a dozen languages, many of them closely related to Norwegian, but Norwegian is just one of those languages that was always on the agenda. He had vague plans of learning the nordic language next time he was travelling around, but he hadn't actually gotten that far.
And now he's standing there, with Bella Swan who has her English name and English-speaking family, born in America, and who doesn't speak a word of English.
"Parlez-vous français ?" he tries after a moment.
Bella has actually taken French as a foreign language in middle school and high school, but she's terrible at it.
"Pas beaucoup," she mumbles, and blushes.
Edward lights up. "On peut parler, donc ?"
Mike turns around to stare at them, eyes bright with curiosity.
And Bella realizes that if she lets Edward know she speaks some French, then half the school will know through Mike before lunchtime.
And then Bella will be stuck having to navigate her way through conversations in atrocious French, where the people she's talking to will supplement their French with English every time they don't know the words.
No thanks, better to be a blissfully languageless foreigner.
"Jeg snakker ikke fransk," (I don't speak French,) she quickly tells Edward, before moving her chair as far from his as possible.
The day after the truck accident happens, and she ends up at the hospital.
Carlisle walks into the ER. "Jeg hører rykter om at vi har en norsktalende ung dame her inne i dag," (Rumor has it we have a Norwegian girl in today) he says, and offers Bella a winning smile.
"Ja!" (Yes!) she exclaims, happy and surprised. "Snakker du norsk?" (You speak Norwegian?)
Carlisle, who hasn't been to Norway in many years, is surprised the girl is using informal pronouns with him, but figures that kids these days are less formal.*
*Prior to the 1970's, the Norwegian language rigorously enforced the T-V distinction.
Carlisle offers up an easy (and prepared) answer for why he knows Norwegian. "Ja, jeg tilbragte somrene mine på Tjøme som barn." (Yes, I spent my summers at Tjøme as a child.)
"Åja," (Oh) Bella answers.
Bella is so thrilled to finally have someone she can converse with properly that she forgets to tell Carlisle about Edward's impossible rescue.
After the examination the Cullens have their infamous meeting, which ends with Alice informing them that Edward loves Bella.
"How can he love her?" Rosalie demands. "They don't understand a word of what the other is saying!"
Edward must concede Rosalie is right.
How can he love a girl he's never had a conversation with?
He visits Bella that night, and to his shock he finds Alice is right.
He can't explain why, but he looks at this girl where she sleeps, ever so vulnerable, with blood heavenly to the point where he can only imagine God created her for his sake, and he feels himself change. He is devoted to this girl, and he will never be able to live without her.
Edward runs home to Carlisle, and asks him to teach Edward Norwegian. They spend the night on Edward learning glossaries and simple sentences, and when Edward shows up at school again he brings Ibsen's En Folkefiende (Enemy of the People) (Carlisle's recommendation). He also reads a Norwegian dictionary, and memorizes all the words in it.
The day goes by uneventfully. Bella can't confront Edward with how he rescued her when they don't speak the same language, even if she could ask him she wouldn't understand his answer. She's wondering if she could get in touch with his father again, as Dr. Cullen actually does speak Norwegian. Maybe she could drop by with flowers as a thank-you for the treatment, and ask to talk for a few moments while she's there?
But, a young girl presenting a married man with flowers and wanting to talk to him privately will get awkward, especially when the man in question looks the way Carlisle does. People would draw conclusions.
Bella ponders her conundrum.
Edward, in the meantime, has learned enough Norwegian from the dictionary, from Ibsen, and from Carlisle that he can understand some Norwegian. He glows brightly with confidence.
"God morgen," (Good morning) he says to Bella in Biology, in fluent Norwegian.
Bella stares. "Snakker du norsk?!" (You talk Norwegian?!) she blurts.
"Noe," (Some) Edward smiles.
"Hvorfor sa du ikke noe?" (Why didn't you say anything?) Bella demands, both surprised and pleased. "Hallo, jeg har jo ikke hatt noen å snakke med!" (I haven't had anybody to talk to!)
That she spoke fast wasn't a problem by itself, but that Bella pulled "har jo ikke" into one word, "ha-jo'kke" and "du ikke" also become one word, "du'kke", makes Edward smile stiffen for a second as he decodes what she just said.
"Jeg lærer," (I'm learning,) he says, and doesn't dare say more.
"Men du har jo nydelig uttale! Like god som faren din," (But you have beautiful pronunciation! As good as your father,) Bella says, still very happy, and oblivious to the fact that Edward's pronunciation is so similar to Carlisle's because he copied it, phoneme by phoneme.
Edward just smiles as he concentrates on combining the sounds Bella is making with the phonetic spellings of Norwegian words he picked up from the dictionary.
He's quiet for a few seconds before answering.
Bella wonders how much Norwegian he really speaks, but he continues before she can ask.
"Carlisle er en god lærer," (Carlisle is a good teacher.) he says.
Bella is really impressed by the Norwegian he has shown so far.
And realizes that she can now confront him with the incident the day before, when he saved her from being hit by a car.
Edward stares. Han hadn't realized she'd have noticed what he did during the accident, certainly not so much of it.
"Jeg er ikke veldig god i norsk," (I'm not very good at Norwegian) he quickly says, and the rest of Biology class is spent with him answering solely in English or overly broken Norwegian each time she makes an overture.
Bella's now more suspicious than ever.
The next day Edward seeks her out, and he tells her in Norwegian that's markedly better than it was the day before that she hit her head, she doesn't remember correctly. That's that.
Bella asks if he was always this good at Norwegian.
"Carlisle er en god lærer," (Carlisle is a good teacher.) he says.
Bella goes to La Push, where she doesn't know Jacob as they didn't grow up together, and she never hears any legends.
Port Angeles happens as in canon, just because she doesn't speak Norwegian doesn't mean Jessica wants to exclude her. Bella can still point to dresses and offer her Scandinavian perspective on fashion. The difference from canon is that when Edward rescues her she has no vampire theories to present him with.
Edward is obviously not human, he has super strength, looks a little too perfect, his skin is stone hard. If he's a robot it would explain his language skills, she knows he didn't speak Norwegian that first week. The language must have been uploaded to him and the delay was because the package wasn't operative right away.
The Cullens are most likely a military project, where they've placed highly sophisticated robots in a society to test how well they can blend in among humans. It certainly makes more sense than "mad scientist lost control of his robot army".
She confronts Edward with this theory.
Edward... supposes he's glad she doesn't know he's a vampire. He's a bit disappointed, but... isn't this a good way to protect her?
If Bella knows he's not human, and that she must keep this a secret, but she doesn't know the darker side of things, is that not the best of two worlds?
So he tells her he's never out in the sun because of the material his skin is made of. He'll show her what he means.
(He needs to buy himself some time to come up with a good explanation for his new robot self that is as close to the truth as possible without Bella finding out he drinks blood.)
They meet up in the meadow, and he lights up like in canon. He tells her this is because he charges in the sun, it was either this or sun panels on his back and those would have been too conspicuous. The sparkle means he's charging.
Because he doesn't want her thinking Edward Cullen is just bytes and electrical circuits, he tells her that he was once a human just like her, but the seventeen-year-old he was become terminally ill, and his parents agreed to a science project that would give his consciousness a chance to live on. Due to security concerns he never saw them again after that, the point is he and all his family were once human.
(Neither of them realizes that this is all strongly inspired by the plot of Robocop.
It helps that they never watched Robocop.)
When they meet James, Bella doesn't catch any of what the robots are saying in English, but she's fascinated by what appears to be rogue robots who walk around without any purpose or missions.
Edward explains to her that some robots break free and become rogues. These robots are very dangerous and must be destroyed at all cost. He goes on to explain to Bella that the robots they encountered now intend to kill her because... well, robots can be very dangerous, and these ones are clearly mad.
The rest of the family (who also learned Norwegian. Rosalie wouldn't have, just to spite Edward, but the unfortunate fact is that she learned it in the 80's so she's stuck) just stares.
(No one points out that this is all strongly inspired by the plot of Blade Runner.
Blade Runner for the record being another film Edward hasn't seen.)
Canon carries on more or less, with increasingly colorful explanations from Edward. James' bite burned the way it did because of battery acid, and Jasper attacked her because he's programmed to kill humans that are bleeding (it's a military thing. Don't ask, Bella).
The rest of the family doesn't quite know what to make of all this, but no one wants to walk up to a human girl and tell her vampires are real, so no one says anything.
Bella, in the meantime, nourishes a hope that she might become part of this military project. She understand that this would be difficult, but she has a brain, she's patriot enough, and she wants to be part of the Cullen family so badly.
Edward explains to her that this will take years to get approved, and they only take the terminally ill anyway. It's unlikely she ever gets approved, and even then she'll be well over thirty by the time it happens, by which time technology will have changed so she's a different model than Edward. Life is rough like that.
Jasper's attack on her is a shock to Edward, who realizes that he's living a lie with a girl who doesn't have a future with him anyway.
He tells her that their romance was a training mission for him. Could he seduce a teen girl and be her lover for half a year? Was he sophisticated enough for that? The answer was yes, so now his task has been completed.
Thank you and good-bye, Bella.
Bella is left there, heartbroken.
She tries to find solace in the fact that the robot she loved passed the Turing Test thanks to her, but that's a meager comfort.
She starts hanging out with Jacob Black, communicating isn't easy for them but he can fix motorcycles, and motorcycles are what Bella wants.
A few months later she jumps from a cliff, and is surprised to find Alice in her house.
Alice sticks to the robot lie, there's no point in vampire truths when the relationship with Edward is over anyway. She stays for two days seeing as she'd missed Bella, and that's when the fateful phone call happens.
Bella and Alice go to Volterra, and Alice can only hope Aro will show Edward some mercy. After all, he didn't tell Bella what he really was.
She tells Bella that the Volturi are like James, but unlike James. They are rogues, but considerably more sophisticated than James was. They're loaded, and... some of them have a virus that make their skin and eyes discolored.)
(Aro, on his end, is... well, impressed by Edward is a nice way to put it. A very nice way.
He wonders if anyone among the Cullens have realized that the word "vampire" doesn't actually matter.)
Bella gets to Edward in time, and the gang is led down into the underground Volturi palace.
(Bella marvels at the obvious age of the palace. How long has the technology for these robots been around? Edward was always vague on that point.)
Aro takes one look at gifted Bella, who's miraculously alive and so very valuable, and immediately tells her the truth. He's a vampire, Edward is a vampire, all the Cullens are vampires, everyone's a vampire. The robot thing was a lie.
Edward is horrified, it's all over now that Bella knows.
Alice can only sigh, Edward should have told the truth from the start.
And Bella stares at Aro, this rogue who obviously has a virus. He looks blind.
Aro tries, but soon has to give up on convincing her they're vampires. Edward learned a language in two days, he became fluent, that's not a vampire thing.
Aro still asks Bella if he wants to be one of them.
And Bella just laughs, she knows that process takes years, there's mountains of paperwork to clear. She'd love to be a robot, but let's be realistic here, guys.
And Aro gives up on the truth. He has to play along, or lose his window with Bella.
So he corrects Bella to "cyborg" in a quiet voice, if he's to be a technological miracle he will at the very least be a correctly named technological miracle.
He then tells her that he has the tech required to make her a cyborg. That's why he has so many vampires (sorry, cyborgs) with him. He made them all!
Edward cries out that all of Aro's robots have viruses and their programming is spaghetti code. Bella's gonna have so many bugs and error messages that she never gets anything done.
Edward is escorted out of the room.
Bella is left feeling very dubious, it's not like she wants a virus.
But she does so want to be a robot. Or a cyborg, whatever they're called (Edward never gave her the name of the model).
Aro promises her she won't get any viruses, the only reason why he, Marcus, and Caius have any is that they agreed to a software update that turned out to contain malware. Had they taken a moment to realize update notifications don't usually come as pop-ups on the internet or in Marcus's case in the mail, this sorry business could all have been avoided. Bella needs only learn from their experiences and mind what she downloads, she'll be fine.
She gets a terrible shock when Aro's laboratory turns out to be an empty room in which he bites her, and she wakes up three days later with a terrible thirst in her throat.
dededos
areudirty
vaporwave
romaincrisis
titsay
germansingergirl
snowghoul
blakekathryn
