By Gary Larson
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
03/12/19

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

03/12/19

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Tuesday, March 12, 2019

ACROSS
1 “We burger as 
good as we 
pancake” chain
5 Ring-shaped reef
10 www code
14 The “M” of MSG
15 Greek played by 
Anthony Quinn
16 Badly damaged 
Asian sea
17 *Wall-hidden 
sliding portal
19 Food truck snack
20 Prepared 
(oneself), as for a 
difficult task
21 Planned with little 
detail
23 Thanksgiving Day 
Parade sponsor
25 Pedaled in a 
triathlon
26 Trowel wielder
29 Remove the rind 
from
32 Letter-routing 
abbr.
33 “The Bathers” 
painter
35 Suppositions
38 Feb. follower
39 *Serve, as stew
40 Old Prizm maker
41 Sports drink suffix
42 Wedding venues
43 Back in the day
44 Writer 
Hemingway
46 Like craft shows
47 Sean who played 
a hobbit
49 Reef explorer’s 
gear
52 Split, as the loot
55 Oyster season, 
so they say
59 “Would __ to 
you?”
60 Together, and a 
hint to both parts 
of the answers to 
starred clues
62 Above
63 Gladden
64 “My treat”
65 Wood cutters
66 Meal with matzo
67 “Downton Abbey” 
employee

DOWN
1 Rascals
2 Laugh-a-minute
3 __ and for all
4 Critters hunted 
in a 2016 mobile 
app
5 Ancient Mexican
6 Hot spiced drink
7 “__ y Plata”: 
Montana motto
8 Wall St. deals
9 Small songbird
10 McDaniel of 
“Gone With the 
Wind”
11 *Fixture on a 
ceiling rail
12 Papier-__
13 Frank __ Wright
18 Panache
22 Movie critic 
Roger
24 Broad-brimmed 
beach bonnets
26 Cry from a crib
27 Just barely
28 *Google Maps 
option
30 American-born 
Jordanian queen
31 Name of 12 
popes

33 Really anger
34 Appraisal amts.
36 Professional 
charges
37 PlayStation 
maker
39 “__ Boy”: Irish 
song
43 Narrow window
45 Mississippi and 
Missouri
46 “It’s __!”: nursery 
cry

47 Pablo’s parting
48 Thriller writer 
Daniel
50 Minos’ 
kingdom
51 “Raw” pigment
53 Applications
54 Heap
56 Singer Turner
57 Port on many 
TVs
58 Start of a flower
61 Family man

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NEW MEDIA NOTEBOOK

NINTENDO

I often joke when I’m going 
through a rough patch that 
upcoming Nintendo releases 
are the only thing keeping 
me going. Yeah sure — there’s 
plenty of music, movies and 
life, I guess, that make the 
daily slog worth it, but what if I 
never got to play “Super Smash 
Bros. Ultimate”? That was the 
light at the end of the tunnel 
that was last fall semester, 
much like the wait for “The 
Legend of Zelda: Breath of 
the Wild” kept me grounded 
senior year of high school. If 
a new “Animal Crossing” or 
“Kirby” game is announced, I 
whisper to myself, “goddamn 
it, they’ve done it again.” The 
next handful of months or even 
years will have the promise of 
(insert new Nintendo game) 
forever tucked away in the 
back of my mind. It’s the carrot 
on a never-extending stick.
So 
when 
“Pokémon Sword” 
and 
“Pokémon 
Shield” 
were 
announced 
a 
few 
weeks 
ago, 
I 
swore 
silently 
under my breath. 
The 
nondescript 
release 
date 
of 
Late 
2019 
can’t 
come soon enough. 
And 
despite 
my 
doubts about Game 
Freak 
making 
a 
main 
series 
“Pokémon” 
game 
for a home video 
game console, the 
proverbial 
hype 
train has left the 
station. 
I 
have 
made it abundantly 
clear to my friends 
and Twitter that I 
would die for that 
monkey.
During 
our 
spring break road 
trip my girlfriend 
and I spent a good 
chunk 
of 
time 
discussing “Sword” 
and 
“Shield” 
speculations 
and 
theories. 
In 
the 
excitement of the 
announcement, 
I 
even 
bought 
“Pokémon 
Ultra 
Sun” to play on 
the trip to scratch 
the itch. I haven’t 
gotten that far, but 
something 
about 
starting 
a 
new 
game 
makes 
me 
fall in love with 
the series all over 
again. The debate 
over which starter 
to choose was as 
back-and-forth 
as it was when 
I booted up my 
first 
“Pokémon” 
game more than 
a decade ago. My 
Safari app is now 
overpopulated 
with 
Bulbapedia 
tabs 
about 
the 
Alola region.
But what makes 
“Pokémon” 
the 
Nintendo 
series 
dearest 
to 
my 

heart, more so than sprawling 
odyssey of a “Zelda” game or 
the platforming precision of a 
“Mario” game?
For years I had just accepted 
video games as a man’s realm, 
to be played and enjoyed and 
talked about at recess fields by 
boys and boys only. The rare 
girl who played video games 
was essentially one of the boys. 
When my parents gave my sister 
and me a Wii for Christmas, I 
was the one who spent hours 
glued to the thing, my sister 
only occasionally stopping by 
for a round of dog frisbee on 
“Wii Sports Resort.” Yes, this 
notion of gendering activities 
is extremely backwards, and I 
resent myself for buying into 
it for so many years, but this is 
what I grew up thinking. Video 
games were a boy’s space.
So why did I always feel 
an 
unexplained 
connection 
with 
female 
video 
game 
characters? Why did I always 
pick Rosalina, Toadette or 
the pink Shy Guy in “Mario 
Kart”? The easy explanation 
to which I chalked it down was 
one offered by a YouTuber I 
used to watch: He reasoned 
to his group of friends that he 
created a female character in 
“Grand Theft Auto V Online” 
because he would rather look 
at a girl than a dude for the 
truckload of hours he would 
pour into the game. Sound 
enough reasoning for 13-year-
old me, who still subscribed 
to the gender binary and had 
never met a queer person in her 
life!
Still, 
even 
then 
this 
explanation 
was 
not 
comforting. Even though I 
always chose or created a 
female player character when I 
was given the option, I would 
never want to be seen playing 
that game because I was afraid 
someone would make fun of me 
or ask why I was playing as a 
girl. It’s a bit sad to think now, 
but this virtual shame was 
perhaps the first manifestation 
of my transgender identity.
And that’s why I found such 
refuge in “Pokémon.” Each 
of the core games was made 
for handhelds (the Game Boy 
Advance, for example) and 
offered me my own private little 
adventure, not displayed to my 
family on the living room TV, 
only shown to those I wanted 
to show — pocket monsters on 
my pocket console. My first 
“Pokémon” generation was the 
fourth, and oh, was it vital. 
“Diamond,” I sing my song of 
love to thee. There’s a common 
phrase found in the openings 
of all the earlier “Pokémon” 
games which is essentially 
the character select screen: 
“Are you a boy? Or are you a 
girl?” The girl in “Diamond” 
is canonically named Dawn, 
whose flowing scarf and pink 
aesthetic I immediately found 
the perfect projection of my 
inward self.
I’d still get teased whenever 
I battled or traded with my 
school friends and they saw a 
pixelated girl pop up on their 
DS screen, but from “Diamond” 
onward I always responded 
“Girl” to the given generation’s 
Professor when they asked. 
And while “Pokémon” isn’t 
explicitly 
a 
queer 
friendly 
game, it has never condemned 

the legions of queer fans whose 
experience with “Pokémon” 
is whatever they make of it. It 
didn’t matter if it was Hoenn 
or Unova; every NPC would 
always refer to me as my 
chosen name (Emily initially 
made the rounds) and gender 
me correctly. Hell, that’s better 
than the real world — their 
batting average is way lower 
than 
“Pokémon”’s 
perfect 
record.
It wasn’t until the sixth 
generation of “Pokémon” that I 
started to realize my constant 
choosing of female protagonists 
was more than an aesthetic 
decision. 
With 
“Pokémon 
Y” Game Freak introduced 
player customization, and I 
was ecstatic. My character 
could actually wear multiple 
cute dresses as opposed to the 
real me who could only dream 
when online window shopping. 
“Y” was also the first time I 
tapped C-a-s-s-i-e into the 
touch screen keyboard. With 
these two aspects however, 
my shame playing as a girl 
grew even greater. I constantly 
played the game with my 3DS 
gripped tight close to my chest.
It’s a bit of a coincidence 
too that the sixth generation 
had two of the most explicit 
references to trans identity. 
Well, not references exactly, 
more 
coincidences 
really, 
but the beauty of “Pokémon” 
is that I can believe them 
to 
be 
references 
and 
not 
immediately be told I’m wrong. 
And plus, at least some one at 
Game Freak has to be down 
for the cause. First, we have 
Sylveon, a Fairy-type evolution 
of first generation pokémon 
Eevee, whose colors match the 
colors of the trans flag to the 
T, and has become the icon for 
trans gamers across the globe 
to trojan horse their transness 
through phone wallpapers and 
Redbubble stickers.
And second, how could we 
forget the benevolent Beauty 
Nova, a female NPC trainer with 
a bit of dialogue mentioning 
she was a “Black Belt” (a 
hulking Karate expert class 
of trainer) “a mere half year 
ago.” Beauty Nova’s dialogue 
opened itself to debate, with 
some fans insisting it was 
just a mistranslation from the 
original Japanese. Personally, 
I’ll have whatever estrogen 
she’s having.
I’ll say it again: “Pokémon” 
is what you make of it. For me, 
not only is each “Pokémon” 
game an incredible journey 
where I lovingly watch these 
weird little creatures evolve 
into a super effective Elite 
Four-squashing squad, but it 
was the first space where I 
could truly be myself without 
obstruction.
In the Photos app on my 
phone 
there 
is 
an 
album 
called “fairy type trash” full 
of selfies and trans memes, 
inspired by our trans icons 
Sylveon and Gen VII starter 
Popplio (I mean, just look at 
her evolutionary line). The 
album primarily exists as a 
timeline to visualize my own 
progress, my own evolution, 
but instead of Exp. Points and 
Rare Candies all it takes is a 
little bit of hormones and a 
lot of confident, unapologetic 
pride in the girl I truly am.

Gamer girl: ‘Pokémon’ 
taught me about myself

CASSANDRA MANSUETTI
Senior Arts Editor

The Widow

Episodes One through Four

Amazon Prime Video

TV REVIEW

AMAZON PRIME VIDEO

In an age where captivating, 
thrilling TV has somehow become 
dime a dozen, “The Widow” offers 
little of note to make it stand out in 
this crowded field. “The Widow” 
features legendary actress Kate 
Beckinsale (“Farming”) making 
her debut as a lead for a TV series, 
but is let down by pretty much 
everything.
Beckinsale plays Georgia, a 
widow who lost her husband in 
a plane crash in the Democratic 
Republic of the Congo a few years 
ago. However, while catching an 
off-hand news update at a hospital 
after a minor injury, she notices 
someone who looks suspiciously 
like her presumed-dead husband. 
A little too suspiciously like 
her presumed-dead husband. 
Intrigued, she travels off to the 
Congo to investigate further, 
becoming entangled in a web of 
individuals including the husband 
of the accused bomber who bought 
the plane down. Other characters 
are brought in and out, mostly to 
explain the plane crash mystery 
(even Charles Dance (“Game of 
Thrones”) is roped in as pretty 
much just a guy with an epic voice).
“The 
Widow” 
frequently 

switches back and forth in time, 
and while that in and of itself isn’t 
necessarily distracting, the writers 
don’t quite pull off the timeline 
shifts well enough to prevent 
the multitude of storylines from 
blurring together. Moreover, the 
pacing and storytelling suffers, 
going much slower than it could 
have gone. Entire sequences could 
have been stitched together instead 
of constantly switching back and 

forth, creating a disorienting effect.
Beckinsale and most of the cast 
deliver at minimum satisfactory 
performances. Even the dialogue 
isn’t terrible, but the storytelling 
is what detracts from all of it. Even 
a couple episodes in, viewers are 
unlikely to develop an emotional 
attachment to any of the characters, 
even those with more intriguing 

storylines. Moreover, the DRC is 
little more than an exotic prop, 
with 
annoyingly 
paternalistic 
undertones 
permeating 
several 
scenes. A few characters are given 
a semblance of a backstory. Some 
even give some social commentary 
about their country’s history and 
the havoc colonialism has wreaked 
on it. However, in a cruel twist of 
irony just like real life, their words 
are largely ignored in favor of the 
“main story.”
Tension is never really built 
in a meaningful way until 
the end of each episode. But 
given the continuous manner 
in which many viewers of the 
show will watch it, even those 
cliff-hangers aren’t all that 
satisfying. The writers bury and 
stomp any semblance of “show 
not tell,” with exposition taking 
up too many scenes. Georgia’s 
relationship with her husband is 
as generic Hallmark show as you 
can get, and her massive quest is 
never given more than a superficial 
raison-d’être.
All in all, the question I kept 
asking myself throughout the 
first few episodes was “why…..?” 
Why should I care about these 
characters? Why aren’t the people 
of the country the show is set 
in given any depth? Why am I 
watching this?

‘The Widow’ is a thriller 
with hardly any thrills

SAYAN GHOSH
Daily New Media Editor

6 — Tuesday, March 12, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

