The theme for this puzzle, like my last one, was created in reaction to Crosshare's auto-fill feature. When I first saw it work, I was profoundly saddened by my apparent obsolescence. Kinda took the fun out of building grids, to be honest. Since then I've been trying to find ways to bypass auto-fill by using entries that while not technically words, in the context of the puzzle's theme, still make sense. This one does just that, and although the plasticity provided by the theme made me think the grid would be easy to complete, it definitely wasn't. Mission accomplished!
Even though this crossword keeps it challenging by presenting two puzzles in one, I kept the hints fairly straight-forward to keep things moving for solvers.