#the polar bear king: east of the sun and west of the moon

[fairytalemovies]

Trailer to the upcoming Norwegian animated feature Kvitebjørn - Østenfor sol og vestenfor måne (2024).

[ariel-seagull-wings]

@the-blue-fairie @princesssarisa @themousefromfantasyland @softlytowardthesun @isthemedia @grimoireoffolkloreandfairytales @adarkrainbow

A William Stout illustration for the Norwegian fairy tale East of the Sun, West of the Moon.

[vesprynna]

🌹🌞The Bear King's Wife🌜🥀

I'm releasing my inner furry powers to draw the most handsome, greenflag polar bear king ever 😤🔥

Art for my reimagening of the fairytales Kvitebjørn Kong Valemon and East of the Sun, West of the Moon which I've dreamed of doing for the past 12+ years 😄💖

[gerec]

fairytale style AU? I'm feeling a bit cheesy

There are a lot of great fairy tale aus in this fandom, Anon; here are a few that I hope you enjoy!

The Changeling Prince by Regann

While seeking help to break a magical curse, a soldier named Erik finds himself trying to solve the mystery of a young prince's illness, a task that leads him deeper into the fickle world of the fae than he ever imagined. (Fairytale AU)

Tale As Old As Time by madneto

Charles is a bibliophile living with his stepbrother in a remote village. Erik is a lonely prince with an affliction he doesn't know how to control. Logan is the greatest hunter in the whole world.

Little Blue Riding Hood by Pangea

An extremely serious retelling of Little Red Riding Hood.

Gain Your Freedom by Synekdokee 

“Why are you so concerned,” the king asked, voice strained. “You are here against your will. You were gifted to me against your consent. When I die, you shall gain your freedom.”

The Most Powerful Thing in the World by velvetcadence

Charles has been cursed with a pig's nose, and only true love can break the spell.

The Little Polar Bear (East of the Sun and West of the Moon) by kageillusionz

In a Modern, Powered AU, Charles Xavier is a struggling post-graduate student who works part time as a waiter for a catering job. His father once owned the prestigious toy company called The Little Polar Bear, that is until he died in a factory fire and his mother remarried to the Markos who run it to the ground.

As fate will have it, Charles is working the night The Little Polar Bear undergoes a merger with Das Spielwarengeschäft mit der Maus, an overseas toy company that is run by the enigmatic Erik Lehnsherr who always keeps part of his face covered.

This is the story of them falling in love and facing a number of trials and tribulations to stay together. Based loosely from the Norwegian fairytale East of the Sun, West of the Moon and written for Round Two of X-Men Big Bang.

The Sleeping Beauty in the Ivory Tower (- or Erik Lehnsherr is a hopeless romantic) by ximeria

There is a tale, out among the stars, of a sleeping beauty in an ivory tower.

Maze by AuraWhiteFox

The last thing Erik expected to deal with was a child kidnapping King from another dimension. But that’s what happening. When one night became too much and Erik wished his children gone the Goblin King accepted his wish and stole them away.

Faced with a future without his children Erik makes a deal with the King, if he can solve the Maze and make it to the Goblin King’s castle in 12 hours he can have his children back.

If he doesn’t…his children will remain in the Goblin’s hands…as too will Erik.

The Sleeping Prince by Gerec 

Erik grew up on tales of the Sleeping Prince, the beautiful boy who slumbers in his castle, waiting for true love's kiss. His stepbrother Sebastian pushes him to go searching for Charles, hoping to wake him and claim a just reward. But when they find the Prince still asleep in his Tower, a simple kiss isn't enough to break the spell...

...so Sebastian suggests they try a little something more.

(A dark, Sleeping Beauty AU).

Erik by jackpack

The Shrek AU nobody asked for. Erik is a mutant living deep in the woods of Genosha, whose land is suddenly invaded by other displaced mutants. Angry, he approaches Lord Stryker, who says that he will only give Erik his land back if he brings him Prince Charles Xavier, the fairest royal in the land and the heir to the Genoshian throne, who has been kept in a tower since his childhood and hidden from the world.

Burn as Blue by ang3lsh1

When the King liberates Prince Erik from the dragon and carries him back to the kingdom, he doesn't realise that Prince Erik feels that he's been kidnapped instead and is determined to make his way back to his dragon.

Love Like Winter by garnettrees (unfinished but amazing and highly recommended!)

"Once, when all the world was green and young, there lived two very different little boys..."

Now these boys have grown, thrust onto a political battlefield filled with long-held grudges and secret motives. Charles has spent the majority of his adult life studying and teaching the finer points of spell casting.

Erik... Erik fights for what is his.

More Than All The World (The Werewolf's Tale) by luninosity

An Erik/Charles story very loosely based on Marie de France’s 12th-century French werewolf tale, in which Erik is the man transformed into a wolf (he’ll get changed back by the end, it’s not that kind of story, though they very definitely do fall in love) and Charles is a king and eventually there’s a happy ending. Also, a villain’s nose gets bitten off.

A Tale of Two Kingdoms by Pangea

The Swan by waitfornight 

In 1939 Erik and his sister Ruth are sent to Devonshire, England, during the Kindertransport refugee program to live with Kurt and Sharon Marko as foster children just before the start of World War II. Angry and wishing he could return home on the night of his seventeenth birthday, Erik meets a boy alone in the forest who is cursed to transform each day into a swan, only taking his true form by night.

Swan Lake AU.

Beyond the Brambles by velvetcadence

Erik won't wake up unless Charles kisses him down there. A Sleeping Beauty AU.

The Sleeping Prince by stickmarionette

The King and Queen both came to a violent end, as so many kings and queens of Genosha had before them. A shame, but all tales of this sort need blood to feed them.

As for the Crown Prince, just fifteen years old and full of promise, he fell into a deep sleep from which no method devised by the best healers in Genosha could wake him.

The tale of Erik Lehnsherr and the Sleeping Prince of Genosha.

Till Human Voices Wake Us And We Drown by SharpestScalpel

Charles is a selkie. Erik finds his pelt.

Snow White & Sky Blue by TurtleTotem

In which Mother MacTaggert raises two mutant infants left to die in the forest, Shaw is an evil dwarf, and Erik is a bear. (An XMFC version of the fairy tale "Snow White and Rose Red".)

As They Kept Falling the Way Leaves Do by cm (mumblemutter) 

Charles saves Erik.

A Wolf Eats the Sun by SharpestScalpel

For a kink meme prompt:

Charles = red riding hood Erik = the hunter Shaw = the wolf

Can be as vanilla or as smexy as you want given how the red hood in the original parable is supposed to represent a girl's virginity lol

Happily Ever After, My Arse! by ximeria

Fairy Land has had a nice, long run of the show Happily Ever After, but with it gearing up to its 13th season, the previous two years' dwindling viewer numbers mean this might be the last one.

The premise has always been a selection of contestants competing for a happily ever after. No one has ever considered adding a clause specifying that villains can't participate. So what happens when the Master of Magnetism decides to join in on the 'fun'?

The show might turn out to be a total disaster — or a total success if the show’s suffering host, Charles Xavier, manages to come to terms with several things, the pressing one among them being his budding attraction to this impossible man. Not that his co-host, Raven, makes it easy for Charles to stay in denial when she’s in charge of dressing up the contestants.

Add in a tablespoon of Shrek, some How to Train your Dragon and a pinch of Monsters' Inc and your Happily Ever After might just not flambè your arse

[river-gale]

jane eyre and fairy tale references in the mars house by natasha pulley

Let's talk about folklore! TMH references it near-constantly. This post was originally just going to be me chatting about individual references for fun and enrichment, but now I want to talk about what purpose they serve.

A few of them are to describe situations or scenery:

This one is a Sleeping Beauty reference, used to describe what happens when the internet goes out. Sleeping Beauty is also a ballet with music by Tchaikovsky, completed in 1899; a lot of ballets are based on fairy tales, so it makes sense that these are the stories the narrator picks. The story is from January's perspective, and he's a former ballet principal—it's a neat bit of characterization.

He also uses them to talk to and about Gale:

(If you know a specific Tang dynasty novel this is referencing, please tell me, I will give you my hand in marriage.)

This is the plot of Bluebeard!

The second one here is Selene and Endymion. The first one is Jane Eyre, which is not technically a folk tale—it's a novel, a work of Gothic literature by Charlotte Brontë—but, like TMH, it follows the same archetypal plot of plenty of folk tales. A vulnerable person, usually a young woman and sometimes poor, has to marry someone powerful and monstrous—an animal, a dragon, an invisible god, a serial murderer, a nobleman who's keeping his ex-wife locked in the attic, or in the case of TMH, a CEO who is also a xenophobic demagogue who may or may not have murdered their last spouse. This is why January references Bluebeard. He's in the exact same type of story.

There's an equivalent feminine archetype of the Monster Bridegroom—the Swan Maiden and related tales—but the allusions in TMH tend towards the Monster Bridegroom version, just because it works better for the themes of power dynamics and different kinds of power.

The thing that makes TMH interesting, though, is that it isn't just an Monster Bridegroom folktale from January's perspective. It's also one from River's. January is marrying an incredibly wealthy and influential politician who wants people like him permanently disabled; River is marrying someone with superhuman strength who belongs to the same group as the person who recently ripped off their leg. If we take "monstrous" to mean alien, powerful, and potentially dangerous, then that's exactly what they are to each other—and what the animal spouses in Monster Bridegroom myths are.

And the allusions in the book reflect that, because they're also used to describe January.

Could be a lot of things—many different cultures have Things In Ponds That Eat You, and that's beautiful—but my first thought is kelpies.

A generic one.

January's Swan King thing! (And then they kiss about it!!)

I don't have a quote for this one, but Earthstrongers—and January in particular—are often compared to polar bears. (He's got polar-bear-colored hair.) It's very East of the Sun, West of the Moon.

The double fairy tale plot of this book is super cool—they're each the same fairy tale archetype to each other—but possibly even cooler is that Jane Eyre does a really similar thing with its fairy tale allusions!

The first speaker is Rochester, and the second is Jane. He's her monster bridegroom (due to the attic wife situation), but he frequently alludes to changeling and fairy stories when speaking about her. It adds some depth to the Jane Eyre reference in TMH!

It also recalls this passage from TMH:

Because at their hearts, Jane Eyre and TMH are both stories about class boundaries and power dynamics being transcended by the ability to match someone's freak.

[fairytalemovies]

Zwerg Nase (2021) has this, sort of. It's been a while since I last saw it, but I remember thinking that in some places it felt like a Disney movie.

I think even some Norwegian and Swedish critics at the time thought that Kvitebjørn Kong Valemon (1991) had a "Disney aesthetic".

Somebody recently said that the Peau d'Âne of Jacques Demy, aka the 1970 Donkey Skin, was their favorite fairytale movie outside of the Disney ones, and that Disney would never adapt Donkey-skin. It is funny because the whole purpose of this movie was to BE a Disney movie.

I posted several times about this movie before, and one of the big things with Demy's creation is that he purposefully embraced and imitated the codes and visuals of the Disney fairytale movies of the time (Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, etc...). He wanted to create a live-action Disney movie, he wanted to make the "Disney movie Disney would never make". Of course there were other influences (the hippie and psychedelic aesthetic of 60s America, the Gustave Doré illustrations of Perrault, the surrealist movement) but Disney was one of the core ones (alongside Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast).

And this made me wonder something... Are there other live-action fairytale movies that purposefully tried to embrace a Disney aesthetic? We know about Disney homages or imitators or rip-offs in the animated world, but in the live-action world? I am pretty sure Demy's Donkey Skin is the only movie I heard of that purposefully tried to embrace a Disney aesthetic. But it can't have been the only one right?

Weren't there other "Disney live-action fairytale" movies before Disney actually made live-action fairytale movies? Probably in other European countries cinema history...

[stresskidz]

Imagine east of the sun and west of the moon/polar bear king as a barbie movie.

[whatsoeverislovelyandpure]

The Polar Bear King / Kvitebjørn Kong Valemon (1991)

[fairytale-idylls]

Norway.

[fairytalemovies]

Alright, here comes some suggestions…

Based on the fairy tale:

La belle et la bête (live action; 1946) Belle to Kaijuu Ouji (puppet animation; 1976) Beauty and the Beast (live action; 1976) Die Schöne und das Tier (puppet animation; 1976) Panna a netvor (live action; 1978) Skønheden og dyret (puppet animation; 1989) Die Schöne und das Biest (live action; 2012) La belle et la bête (live action; 2014)

Based on fairy tales similar to Beauty and the Beast:

Der Prinz hinter den sieben Meeren (live action; 1982) Kvitebjørn kong Valemon (live action; 1991)

Inspired by the fairy tale:

Meridian: Kiss of the Beast (live action; 1990) - Be aware, though… It's not a good movie!

So like, does anyone have any good Beauty and the Beast type movies to recommend? I've seen all four Disney movies (the original, the two DVD sequels, and the live-action remake), Belle (the anime), Blood of Beasts (a low budget Viking movie), Beauty and the Beast (the series starring Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton), I am Dragon (a Russian movie about a dragon), The Shape of Water (the Del Toro movie that everyone needs to watch at least once in their life), Penelope (Christina Ricci movie where the girl is actually the 'beast'), Corpse Bride (the stop motion musical about a dead woman trying to marry a living man), Warm Bodies (Zombie!Romeo x Survivor!Juliet), Edward Scissorhands (needs no introduction), Bram Stoker's Dracula (the sexy one with Gary Oldman), the Shrek quadrilogy (even if only the first one really fits the mold), and I'm going to include TAU on this list (a movie about a kidnapped girl, a sadistic scientist, and a tortured AI) because you can't convince me that it wasn't a love story.

I love Beauty and the Beast and stories that are similar, so any recommendations are appreciated.

(Also, if you want to count Phantom of the Opera as a Beauty and the Beast story, I've seen the 1943 version, the Robert Englund version, half of the Julian Sands version (it was really bad), and the Gerard Butler musical version.)

[maskedhatterdoodles]

East of the Sun West of the Moon

Hello!! I am back from my long, long looooooooooooong doodling hiatus (for now at least)

First off, I have to thank @phana-banana and their wonderful little comic series The Uggo Club (I highly recommend checking it out, it is extremely funny and wonderfully drawn) for reminding me of this fairy tale. I absolutely adored this story growing up (my first contact to it was the film "The Polar Bear King" which is pretty much a retelling of the original tale that also combines elements from similar tales) and I had forgotten it completely till I saw the inclusion of Bjørn in the uggo comic (which honestly had me in stitches) and was inspired to seek out the story again (which in turn inspired me to do this particular peice.)

I was initially going to attempt to do more of an etching style drawing, but the further along I got with the piece, the more I felt it should be a lineless drawing (a desicion I am heartily glad I made.)

Anyway, hope you all enjoy and I'll see you all next time

[fairytalemovies]

Kristine Kujath Thorp - Flaske, duk og saks

[fairytalemovies]

One of the better Nordic fairytale movies. :)

The Polar Bear King (1991) 

[cuppykin]

East of sun west of moon gives me an idea to make a burly mean polar bear king bf

[angiestown]

Animal Crossing Town Name Ideas - Updated

I made this post last week with the assumption that town names in NH would be limited to 8 characters like in previous games. After today’s direct, we know that towns can have at least 10 letter names! I decided to update this list to include 6 and 7 letter words because of the new flexibility those two extra letters add (along with more short words that I didn’t think of the first time). Just choose 2-3 words you like that add up to 10 letters or less, and you’ve got a town name!

Island/Water words:

3 letters: Bay, Sea, Wet, Eel

4 letters: Isle, Tide, Dock, Port, Boat, Ship, Sand, Lake, Flow, Damp, Pond, Palm

5 letters: Shore, Shell, Beach, Pearl, Ocean, Moist, River, Water, Coral

6 letters: Cruise, Summer, Bubble, Harbor, Marine

7 letters: Seaweed, Mermaid, Harbour

Animal words:

3 letters: Cat, Dog, Paw, Cow, Cub, Pig, Fox, Zoo

4 letters: Fish, Frog, Bird, Wing, Tail, Lion, Bull, Deer, Bear, Duck, Goat, Crab, Horn, Wolf, Gull, Tuna

5 letters: Horse, Bunny, Tiger, Eagle, Hippo, Koala, Kitty, Puppy, Mouse, Moose, Rhino, Sheep, Shark, Whale

6 letters: Rabbit, Monkey, Badger, Parrot, Salmon

7 letters: Firefly

Forest words:

3 letters: Oak, Nut, Dew, Sap, Elm, Fir

4 letters: Wood, Weed, Seed, Bark, Tree, Fall, Leaf, Root, Vine, Pine, Bush, Moss, Dirt, Snail

5 letters: Maple, Field, Acorn, Grass, Nymph, Plant, Wheat, Swamp, Cliff, Birch, Cedar

6 letters: Acacia, Nutmeg, Willow, Mildew, Canopy, Cotton, Spruce, Walnut

7 letters: Hemlock, Hickory

Flower words:

3 letters: Bug, Bee

4 letters: Rose, Lily, Bulb, Iris, Puff

5 letters: Bloom, Tulip, Spring, Cosmo, Pansy, Daisy, Honey, Poppy, Lilac, Lotus, Peony

6 letters: Violet, Spring, Bumble, Beetle, Garden

7 letters: Blossom, Ladybug

Food words:

3 letters: Pit, Cup, Egg, Pie, Bun, Tea

4 letters: Pear, Sour, Lime, Plum, Cake, Milk, Bean, Farm, Bake, Cook, Roll, Mint, Tart

5 letters: Apple, Peach, Lemon, Berry, Fruit, Sweet, Grape, Mango, Sugar, Jelly, Cream, Layer, Candy, Mince, Fudge, Donut, Pecan, Toast

6 letters: Banana, Potato, Carrot

7 letters: Dessert, Mustard, Cupcake

Sky/Weather words:

3 letters: Sky, Sun, Day, Ray, Fog, Sol

4 letters: Moon, Star, Rain, Dark, Wind, Drop, Mist, Warm, Luna, Gust

5 letters: Night, Cloud, Shine, Light, Foggy, Comet, Storm, Dream

6 letters: Cosmos, Breeze, Meteor, Bright

7 letters: Thunder, Eclipse, Rainbow

Winter words:

3 letters: Ice, Nip

4 letters: Snow, Slip, Bite, Cold, Coat, Yule, Noel, Cozy

5 letters: Frost, Chill, Flake, Holly, Jolly, Slush, Polar, Scarf

6 letters: Winter, Tundra, Aurora, Toasty, Mitten, Arctic

7 letters: Snowman

Colours:

3 letters: Red

4 letters: Blue, Aqua, Teal, Pink, Navy, Grey, Gray, Cyan, Gold, Jade

5 letters: Black, Green, Brown, White, Amber, Color, Azure, Ivory, Blush

6 letters: Purple, Silver, Golden, Ginger

7 letters: Crimson, Saffron, Verdant

Months:

3 letters: May

4 letters: June, July

5 letters: March, April

6 letters: August

7 letters: January, October

Music words:

3 letters: Tap

4 letters: Tune, Beat, Drum, Sing, Song, Sung, Bell

5 letters: Music, Flute, Rhyme, Choir, Tempo, Strum

6 letters: Chorus, Melody, Rhythm 

7 letters: Harmony

Spooky words:

3 letters: Urn, Ash, Bat, Web, Sad, Rib

4 letters: Goth, Bone, Jack, Grim, Crow, Scar, Cage, Tomb, Weep, Wail

5 letters: Ghost, Quiet, Witch, Death, Mummy, Demon, Devil, Raven, Skull, Scare, Ghoul, Grief, Blood, Scary, Haunt, Grave

6 letters: Spooky, Creepy, Autumn, Plague, Broken

7 letters: Pumpkin, Lantern, Haunted, Twisted, Weeping

Rocks and Gems:

3 letters: Jet

4 letters: Rock, Ruby, Onyx, Opal

5 letters: Stone, Agate, Amber, Beryl, Flint, Lapis, Nacre, Topaz

6 letters: Marble, Basalt, Gypsum, Garnet, Jasper, Quartz, Lazuli, Spinel

7 letters: Citrine, Diamond, Emerald, Peridot

Other:

3 letters: Row, Way, Tip, Top, Low, Out, Run, New, Old, Big, Rip, Fly

4 letters: York, Lane, High, East, West, Over, Road, Trim, Past, Slow, Tiny, Gift, Land, Cape, Comb, King, Well, Wild, Town, City, Fire

5 letters: South, North, Under, Short, Small, Range, Crown, Glory, Peace, Queen, Speed, Angel, Happy, Ville, Cross, Sword

6 letters: Desert, Canyon, Castle, Battle, Shield, Steady

7 letters: Welcome, Glimmer, Slipper, Glitter, Unicorn

[konglindorm]

White Bears

So the other day I was flipping through my Kay Nielsen-illustrated “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” collection with my mom, because she’d never seen the illustrations before, and they’re some of my favorites. And we weren’t actually reading the stories this time; we were just there to look at pretty pictures.

The book starts with the titular “East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” and therefore some illustrations of white bears. And then we keep going through a few more pages, and suddenly there’s another illustration of a white bear, and at this point I’m thinking “oh, right, ‘White Bear King Valemon.’ Huh. It’s kinda strange that there would be two Norwegian enchanted bridegroom stories where the bridegroom is specifically a white bear.”

And then I flip to the next page, and, granted, at this time I haven’t read “White Bear King Valemon” in a few years, but the next illustration was not at all consistent with what I remembered. So I went back a few pages to discover that this set of white bear illustrations was actually for “The Blue Belt,” and this collection didn’t even include “White Bear King Valemon.”

So let’s talk today about the enchanted bridegroom subset “white bears in Norway.”

Now, the reason I'd forgotten about the white bear bit of "The Blue Belt" is that it's largely inconsequential, just another crazy element in a story packed with crazy. The main character is never actually turned into a bear, but does convincingly disguise himself as one to meet the princess he loves in secret, allowing him to collect insider information to win her hand. The main thing about this story is that, as irrelevant as his white bear disguise is to the plot as a whole, it has resulted in a couple of fantastic illustrations that can easily be used for bear-based enchanted bridegroom stories. But primarily we're here to talk about "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" and "White Bear King Valemon," which are very similar but also completely distinct stories. You can read all about "East-West" here, and this post will be mainly running through how "King Valemon" is different and why we care.

So first off, this is another of those stories where youngest kid is best kid and therefore wins, and specifically the kind of story where it's not something you really want to win - in this case, the right to be kidnapped by a polar bear. All three sisters are princesses, and the bear deemed the older two unworthy to be kidnapped, possibly because they had brains in their heads, which our girl does not seem to.

Bear whisks girl away to palace, joins her in bed at night in human form. And, okay. Remember how in "East of the Sun, West of the Moon," the girl and the enchanted bear have to share a bed for a year, and we really don't know exactly what all they're doing in that bed?

In "White Bear King Valemon," we know exactly what they're doing, and it's exactly what you think. She lives with the bear for three years, and in that time she has three babies. All of whom the bear whisks away immediately. Which, dude, yikes.

I mean, ambiguous bed-sharing with a stranger for one year is already a little, um...well. But getting knocked up by a stranger? Three times? And having all the babies kidnapped by the same white bear who kidnapped you? Who you may or may not have gathered by now is also the stranger who knocked you up? (My money's on not gathering that, because our girl doesn't strike me as the brightest, so far.) Again, yikes. I'm just, like, I'm at a loss for words. "Yikes" is all I've got, guys.

Why does she keep having sex with this man? Does she have a choice? Is this consensual? Why isn't she questioning this man about what on earth is going on here? Why is she not having an enormous fight with the bear and demanding her children back? Why is she allowing herself to become pregnant again when she knows that the baby is going to be taken away by the bear? What does she even think the bear is doing with the babies?

There comes a time when you just have to say, okay, either the sex stops or we explore period-appropriate alternatives to birth control, because I refuse to bring another child into this world to be eaten by a bear.

After three years and three stolen babies, the girl convinces the bear to let her visit home. Where her mom does the whole "You're doing what? With who? You haven't even seen his face?" bit, only she's even more justified in her concern than the East-West mom, because her daughter is reproducing​ with this man and then allowing her grandbabies to be taken away and possibly eaten by a talking bear​. Like, yes, mom, you tell her; she should absolutely be gathering more information about this situation. There is a time and a place to go with the flow, and that is not​ here and now, sweetheart.

So she goes back with the white bear and lights her little candle, and he wakes up when the tallow drips on him and acts like this is some great betrayal, and not the sensible thing she should have done two and a half years ago when she realized she was pregnant the first time.

He is, like in East-West, just one month from the curse being broken, and I would like to just take a moment to say that is not fair, the troll who cursed him is not playing by the rules, everyone knows the time frame in situations like this is a year and a day, what is this slightly over three years crap?

Bear switches from hot guy back to bear and runs off to where he's supposed to meet the troll or whatever, idk - the girl grabs his fur and tries to go with him, but falls off in the forest somewhere.

She does her best to catch up with him on foot, and on the way she meets three little girls, living with three old women, and each of these girls gives her a gift; these gifts are what she will trade to the troll for three nights with the white bear - well, with King Valemon, now that his bear-curse is over. He's drugged on the first two nights, and they can finally talk on the third, just like in East-West. But instead of Fun With Laundry, in this story they make a trap door for the troll to fall through when she's walking down the aisle. Which. Lame.

With the troll handled, King Valemon takes our girl home, but on the way we stop to collect the three little girls who helped her. Because those are their kids, who he, get this, "had taken so they could aid in her quest." The quest that didn't exist yet at the time, because he hadn't been taken by the troll yet, and had no reason yet to suspect that she would look at his face - I mean, the girl was having babies with him and not bothering about the face, so I would have considered it a safe bet that she would continue not bothering, and taking the babies was definitely overkill.

Also, like. She lived with him for three years and had three babies. After three years, she visits her parents, and then she looks at him with the candle; this all seems to happen pretty quickly. Which means the oldest girl might, maybe, possibly be as old as three, but probably she's younger. We should have an age range of infant to toddler here. And yet all three are described as little girls, not babies, and all three seem able to effectively communicate. So that's a bit of a plot hole. Gotta love timeline inconsistency.

In conclusion: "East of the Sun, West of the Moon"? Beautiful, meaningful story, perfect, magnificent, 25 out of ten. "White Bear King Valemon?" Garbage story full of garbage characters who make garbage decisions, not worth the paper it's printed on, only redeeming feature is mom not putting up with her daughter's absolute idiocy.