The tradition of keeping captive animals for display is an old one. This week, the New Worlds Patreon discusses zoos and menageries, past present, and future! Comment over there.

Do you have a dog? A cat? A bird? A tarantula? This week the New Worlds Patreon continues its exploration of the animals in our lives with a look at pets. Comment over there!

Our pets today have it easy: we rarely make them work for their kibble. This week, the New Worlds Patreon tackles the category of working animals! Comment over there.

It’s onward to a new month with the New Worlds Patreon, which means a new topic: animals! Starting with livestock, and questions like “what is domestication” and “why have we domesticated these animals and not those.” Comment over there!

In the last essay for April, the New Worlds Patreon turns its attention to the world of banking! (Part of it, anyway — the investment side will have to wait for later.) Comment over there!

This year we have an extension on filing our taxes, but the New Worlds Patreon is going to discuss taxation anyway: what we tax, how we pay, and how this can actually generate story. Comment over there!

They say love makes the world go round, but after writing this week’s essay for the New Worlds Patreon, I think it might actually be debt instead. Comment over there!

I don’t know if it’s tax season that made the Topic Backers from the New Worlds Patreon vote for an economics theme this month — but voted they have, and so they shall receive! After all, that’s the trade we’ve agreed to. And certain kinds of trade are the subject of today’s essay: specifically, barter. Including how I previously said a wrong thing about it, and need to walk that statement back.

Comment over there!

The New Worlds Patreon wraps up this pass through legal topics with the question of evidence: what we accept as legally valid, what we don’t, why, and how that’s changed over time. Comment over there!

In this time of lockdown, the New Worlds Patreon continues! (I mean, my regular life is only about one step away from lockdown regardless. Though I do miss going to the dojo.) This week we move on to other kinds of trial — specifically, the various types of ordeal once used to determine guilt or innocence. Comment over there!

Do you like watching legal dramas? This week, the New Worlds Patreon goes into the courtroom for a look at how trials operate — which turns out to be quite variable depending on the circumstances and which legal system your country runs on. Comment over there!

I’ve been putting off tackling the topic of law in the New Worlds Patreon for about three years now, because it’s so complex and interwoven with other things. But I finally made myself put it into the poll, and my patrons voted for it, so as a law-abiding Patreon creator, I have obeyed their wishes. Starting with the basics of legal systems — themselves rarely the direct subject of fiction, but a necessary foundation for what comes after. Comment over there!

The New Worlds Patreon closes out its third (!!!) year on something of a dishonest note — because where games and sports go, gambling isn’t far behind . . . nor is its false-faced cousin, cheating.

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Quidditch may not be a very well-designed sport, but one thing J.K. Rowling got right — sports can be an important part of a fictional society. Comment on the latest New Worlds Patreon essay over at Book View Cafe!

It’s a good thing I happen to have this month’s New Worlds posts written in advance, because I have been slapped flat by the Cold of Doom. But thanks to prep work, that doesn’t prevent me from sharing with you this week’s essay on games! Comment over there.

Another month, another theme for the New Worlds Patreon! To kick off our spin through leisure activities, we’re starting at the young end, with toys for children. Or, y’know, objects “for ritual use.” Depending on how much the archaeologists are throwing their hands up into the air and shrugging. 🙂

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Year Three of the New Worlds Patreon has had quite a lot of months with five Fridays, and this is the last one. Which means it’s time for a theory post! This time around, it’s the question of where to start the worldbuilding process — which parts of it should be high-priority, and which can be left until later. Comment over there!

As the New Worlds Patreon comes to the end of another month, we turn our attention to poison! Both the cause and the cure of suffering, depending on how it’s applied — as Paracelsus very wisely pointed out. Comment over there!

Warning: this week’s New Worlds Patreon essay includes quite a lot that is squicky or horrifying. Not in a super-graphic way, but simply in the realization that the medical treatments of the past were often howlingly wrong at best — and lethal at worst.

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