SUMMER SEASONAL UPDATE! (Patreon)

Yay sun, boo heat. Such is the passing of the seasons, but that means time for an OSP summer update! 

First thing, Thank You to everyone who’s supported the launch of my book The Veneziad! Whether you got a copy from the Kickstarter, watched along with my recent trio of Venetian history videos, or anything in between, your support has meant the world. So far we’ve unlocked higher-quality paper, at least 8 in-lore sea shanties for the back of the book (let’s face it, there’ll be more), an audiobook of me reading the story that’ll go up on YouTube after all the books get shipped out next year (that way the campaign’s backer’s get access first), and deluxe foil bookmarks – all that remains is the one last stretch goal for full color printing inside the book. We are CLOSE.
That’s all plenty impressive, but to quantify how truly record-breaking the OSP community really is, I’m honored and humbled to say that even with several days left, The Veneziad is Wraithmarked’s highest-grossing campaign ever – Hell Yeah. I can’t wait for you all to get your hands on the book and enjoy the story for yourselves.

In other book news, Red is officially set to publish a physical release of her Aurora webcomic! (Comicaurora.com) Volume 1, containing chapters 1-11, will hit the shelves next summer. As someone who binged all 22 chapters of Arc 1 over the winter break, I am HYPED to read this in a big fancy book.
Red and I are beyond thrilled to finally be able to talk about all this, as they’re the results of years of work behind the scenes and the diligent patience to not yap about it before everything was ready.

But of course, the core of OSP is the channel, and we’ve got plenty of cool videos coming up. Red’s got myths for Oisín & Niamh, Cadmus, and a deep dive on the Muses, as well as trope talks on Secret Identities and Environmental Storytelling, and a Detail Diatribe on The Anime That Inspired Wind Waker. Meanwhile, I’m waking up from my Venice binge and am still in the process of figuring out what exactly to talk about this summer. I’ve got the history of Naxos and a DD on Redeeming “Revenge of the Sith” locked in – then after that Hesiod, Roman Wise Guys, and Classical Greece are listed in my schedule, but it’s entirely possible I swap out them for something else. After the Veneziad Kickstarter I honestly I think I’ll need a bit of a nap before I can think that far ahead. What I can say for sure is we’re planning ahead for this year’s Halloween Special on Mummies – it’s going to be a special Red & Blue team-up episode.

On the livestreaming front, we’ll be streaming the Orpheus DLC for Stray Gods next Thursday, and sometime in July or August we’ll have a summer charity stream with tons of guests. It’s been a quiet year for livestreams in part because that energy and spare time has gone into the Veneziad and Aurora (and frankly after a great year of Zelda streams it’s tough to find another game that can motivate us like that), but we’re looking forward to doing more streams and more After-Darks when our schedules allow.

For Merch, we’re following up our Gemini constellation pin with the Space Crab pin next month, and because we can’t help ourselves, this pin will come in a special Knife Crab variant. Those go on sale Friday July 5 and will run for 2 weeks, and then every month we’ll progress through the constellations until we land back at Taurus in April.
Additionally, we’re working with Crowdmade on a new pin-related offering – Standing Pins! It’s essentially a pin standing up in a cool display case, but easily removable and swappable so you can take the pins off and still use them as pins. The way they designed it, there’s a stand, backing card, pin, and covering – the circular stand has a slot to insert a backing card, on which the pin is attached, covered by a little acrylic dome like the rose-cloche from Beauty and the Beast. It’ll accommodate larger-sized pins which we’d print in the usual small batches (imagine: Big Loki), but we’re working on how to make it also fit the regular-sized pins, most likely with included backing cards that can fit two normal pins side by side. So if you already have a pin collection, you can get some stands on their own for display without getting larger new pins.
This is still actively in development, so your feedback will help us design the best product we can! Please feel free to vote in the poll below or leave a comment with your thoughts – we value your honesty!

As always, thank you for your support of OSP here on Patreon. Back in the day Patreon is what let us take the plunge on doing this channel full-time out of college, and today it’s what allows us to invest the time on meaningful but riskier ventures like books. As I’ve recently proven to my publisher by scaring them half to death with the numbers on The Veneziad, the OSP community kicks ass.

-Blue