SPRING SEASONAL UPDATE! (Patreon)

Happy Spring everybody!

I apologize that this update is a week  delayed. Without getting into any details, Red and I have independently  had to manage matters unrelated to OSP that have taken up a solid share  of our focus and time in the past month. Once we roll into April, we're  hoping to get back to normal and continue our livestreaming of HADES,  because we had an absolute blast the last time we played that game.

2021  so far was pretty good for OSP. We've been having fun with the podcast,  keeping up our regular Friday uploads, doing more OSP Animated stuff on  our designated Tuesday-Bonus-Content days, and streaming  semi-regularly. I had been going a little lighter on my videos for the  first part of this year as I'm still somewhat recovering from the  constant blast of work in 2020, so I appreciate many of you being  accommodating and even enthusiastic about some of my recent videos being  more in my comfort zone.

February was a big month for us, as we  had the absolutely mind-blowing success of Hades & Persephone,  getting enough viewership to even put Journey to the West to shame — and  y'all really liked the pins too! We'll have three more pin launches  spread throughout the year (next up is Loki on April 9 but I'll get back  to that later), and starting the last week of November we'll be  re-selling all of our 2021 pins, in case you miss them the first time  around. We'll also launch a full re-run of all of our pins *ever* when  we cross a special channel milestone, but that likely won't to happen  until next year.

As for what's coming up this Spring, a few  things. We're planning to get back to streaming soon (that once-a-week  schedule was nice), we've got some more great guests coming up on the  podcast (next up are Yellow/LudoHistory and then TierZoo!), and there's  some fantastic episodes coming at you in the next few months —  highlights include: The Loki Deep Dive (holy heck this one's wild), the  myth of the Lindworm, Trope Talks on Timeskips and Sins of the Father  (these three were patreon-requests from the old system, so sadly no TT  voting this time around), the long-awaited tangent about Neoclassical  Architecture (hype, but also, if y'all like it, there's more where it  came from), a History Hijinks on Actually-Good Rulers, and  Histories-summarized on Poland and Britain (finally closing out that  series woot). Fun stuff!

We take pride on operating a steady  ship, but we of course try new things from time to time. This spring  we'll be taking a bit of a leap into a new kind of content that we're  interested to get your take on. Essentially, you may have noticed that  YouTube is rolling out "Shorts" as a pilot program for 1-minute videos.  We've experiment with 1-minute content in the past with middling  results, but this time we've got an idea we think you'll all really  enjoy: Every few weeks, on our designated Tuesday-Bonus-Content days,  we'll be running 1-minute shorts on topics related to our channel but  wouldn't necessarily work as full videos. Specifically, we'll be  launching a new series: City Minute!

City Minute will be a  historical quick take looking at famous cities during their most  powerful, formative, or transformational centuries. Whether it's 400s  Athens in the golden age, 1800s Tokyo's rapid modernization, 1400s  Tenochtitlan in the Aztec empire, 1700s Montreal torn between France and  Britain, or 700s Chang'An in the Tang Dynasty, each video will look at  how the city drove or benefited from larger movements in history. I'll  look to address politics, economics, culture, technology, and other  factors where applicable. We'll be revisiting some places we've seen in  mainline History Summarized videos (because ya boy has his favorites),  but this shorter format (and significantly more manageable  work-investment-per-topic) will also let us go way farther afield than  usual and get to new topics faster than we'd otherwise be able to — You  should see my master-list of History Summarized ideas, it's almost 4  years long at this point.

We are really excited about this  miniseries, and we hope you all enjoy them as well. We're also  brainstorming some possible miniseries options for Red's side of the  channel, but we don't have anything to share with you yet. It may take  us a while to get to pace with these, or it may come very easily, we're  going to just have to try it and see how it goes — and your support here  on patreon allows us to take these kinds of risks! So, truly, thank  you. We'll have more to share as we get moving with these, but for now,  you can anticipate a launch sometime in the next month or so!

And  that brings us to our seasonal poll! This time, we'd love to have your  input on what areas you'd like us to cover for our early run of these  City Minute shorts (with some topic examples), so please vote for your  favorite(s) below, and we'll focus there. Additionally, please comment  with your suggestions for Red as she's outlining the Summer slate of Trope Talks.

Again, thank you all so much for supporting the work  we do, but also simply for watching and enjoying it. In circumstances  like now, it's a great responsibility but also a deep reward to be  creating content that's educational and entertaining and sometimes  relieving. So thank you for trusting us to do what we feel is very  important work.

Happy Spring!
-Blue