I was charmed by the cover of issue #38/39. I was also confronted with problems of rat history that prompted a series of inquiries, which I reproduce here in search of a definitive answer:
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The rat audience population seems to imply that time passes for NYRA rats between each issue in which they are portrayed, and that their world has a stable timeline to which they can return, for instance, on this issue’s cover. This, in turn, implies the existence of rat history. The human version of The Nutcracker ballet is based on the 1816 story by E. T. A. Hoffmann, Nussknacker und Mausekönig (The Nutcracker and the Mouse King). Setting aside the problem of mice—for indeed the mice have often been transfigured into rats in American Nutcrackers—does this signify an early German romantic turn in the Rat Universe that parallels our own? Who is the Rat Hoffmann? Whither Rat Goethe? Will we get to meet these eminent rats in later issues?
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I initially thought the emerging “Rat King”—a rat wearing a mask of a rat, indicated by the differing eye structure and multiple nefarious teeth—was himself the Nutcracker Prince of this Rat Nutcracker production. My confusion was due to the sleeve cuff and little crown, which have a certain Kaiserlich touch to them, very in keeping with the period. And, frankly, the logic does not follow that the villain of The Nutcracker, as written by a Rat Hoffmann for a rat audience, would himself be a rat! The Nutcracker has a human form in the human Nutcracker, and so the rats should indeed have a Rat Nutcracker Prince of their own. Should their villain not instead be something they see as terrifying vermin, perhaps a rat donning the mask of a man?
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I notice with interest that the rat corps de ballet for the Waltz of the Snowflakes appears to be dancing the Balanchine version specifically, based on the plumed hand fans they carry in this production. This implies the existence of an émigré rat ballet master and a mixed Russian American tradition, which suggests a Rat Soviet Union once stood in tandem with the Rat New York in the magazine’s illustrations. This is particularly interesting because the ballet stage at Lincoln Center is not raked or inclined, while Soviet stages often were. And yet puzzlingly, despite NYRA rats presumably being in New York, they seem to be dancing in slanted perspective on a raked stage! Does this mean that a Rat Balanchine brought different traditions with him to Rat America? When will I get to see the Rat Bakst drawings for the costumes of the Rat Ballets Russes?
I appreciate your patience here and shall not try it more with a discursus on the rat metatarsal and the presumed innovations in rat pointed shoes. However, if, as the illustrations of reading and writing rats in past NYRA issues imply, they do have a consistent language and history, I would very much appreciate it if NYRA editors could contact the Rat editors in the parallel timeline and secure clarifications on these pressing matters. I know I would not be alone among the readership in also demanding a sample illustration of a Soviet Rat Brutalist monument.