No Bears

 I'm back--and not too long after the last puzzle! I usually am a slow-ish constructor, but I've been on a bit of a kick lately, so I have a proper 11x midi (a themed one, even!), and I may even be back soon-ish with a full-sized grid (but that one's still very much in progress, so don't hold your breath).

This puzzle was made as an entry to the Crosshare Discord's midi challenge, which is a soon to be monthly event where various constructors make 11x midis based on a given prompt. This month's prompt is the revealer in this puzzle, since I heard it and quickly had a somewhat silly theme concept. Said concept then went through several iterations to find one that works within an 11x  (since it turns out that constructing a traditionally themed 11x with a 10-letter revealer is not so easy), and in some ways this is more a proof of concept than anything. Mostly, I tried to focus on what makes a midi puzzle fun and packed the fill and especially the clues with things I like (TTRPGs! Sports anime! Taylor Swift! American Girl!), along with some fun wordplay.

Thanks to my sister, as usual, for test solving. Some spoiler-y construction and etymology talk below the puzzle.

Puz file for the bot | Direct Crosshare link

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Okay, spoilers from this point on. Don't say I didn't warn you.

One etymology "fun fact" that I see around the Internet is that the Arctic and Antarctica are derived from the Latin or Greek for "the one with bears" and "the one without bears". This, like many etymology fun facts, is only sort of true. It's true that these names originally stem from the Greek arktos meaning bear, but that's only because it's the origin of the Greek word arktikos for north, since the Ursa Major (or Great Bear) constellation is in the north, which then became the Latin arcticus and got combined with the prefix ant- to denote a place very far south. So really Antarctica is just the place in the opposite direction from Ursa Major, and it's just serendipitous that it is also the pole with no bears, but the etymology did make for a fun little theme.

My initial thought for this theme was to play more on the "opposite of bear" etymology and take phrases like BLACK COFFEE or POLAR OPPOSITES and switch the first word to its opposite to get themers like WHITE COFFEE clued in silly ways. This, however, posed two problems. First, this was absolutely not doable in an 11x, and the challenge is exclusively for 11x puzzles. I considered releasing two versions of this puzzle, one this midi version and another a 15x puzzle using my initial theme, until I ran into the second problem. It turns out there aren't that many bears that have opposites. BLACK to WHITE was an easy change, but what's the opposite of POLAR? Or BROWN? And what other bears even have good enough set phrases that I can play on them?

I wouldn't be surprised if a more skilled constructor could make a more clever version of the "no bears" concept (in 15x form and all!). Maybe I'll even become that more skilled constructor someday. As is, I hope that you found this version fun!