NEW YEAR'S SEASONAL UPDATE!

Happy new year everyone!

We hope you enjoyed our last batch of videos for 2024, but now it's a brand new year and that means time to zoom out and look at where OSP stands going into 2025!

First, a 2024 Recap:
The last year was an absolute blast for Red & I. We had some really fun Trope Talks from Trickster Heroes and Heroic Sacrifices to Timeloops and Secret Identities, plus a look at some load-bearing pillars of storytelling like The Noodle Incident. On the History front, I powered my way through more of Greek History, running from the dawn of the Polis Age through the end of the Classical period – and had a fun 3-part Venice mini-marathon to celebrate the launch of the Veneziad. All that plus possibly my best episode of Pope Fights to date. Then we had the real heavy hitters like Astraea, the Zodiac Race, the Heroes of Greece, the latest Journey To The West, and possibly our biggest collective Hoist in OSP history: the wombo-combo Halloween Special on the Mummy, with accompanying history video and detail diatribe. Speaking of, we had a killer slate of Detail Diatribes, from Star Wars and Space Marines to Batman and Shadow of the Colossus.
Red and I are really having fun getting more into the analysis of what makes stories so great, beyond the mere summaries – and as we get into 2025, we want to find more ways to talk more about storytelling in more depth, across history, myths, literature, and modern media.

Our streaming calendar was a little lighter this year, partly because Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are a tough act to follow, partly because we were focused more on video production in 2024 (Mummies man... that video took a lot of work). Nonetheless, we raised a combined $36,000 for various national and international causes across half a dozen streams!

ON TO 2025! >:)
Our biggest goal for the year is to make an amazing slate of videos for you. First things first is taking a quick break in the upload schedule for the first two Fridays of January, but we've already got some topics picked for the early months of the year: like a deep dive on the Greek Muses, a valentine's-special hijinks video about Rousseau & Voltaire's Best Friend Breakup, a Pope Fights on Caterina Sforza, a couple trope talks on topics like "The Dreaded" and "Big Dumb Objects", that history of New Zealand I've had in my sights for the last few months, and a Detail Diatribe on Transformers One. We always have a great time when we line up videos on related topics, like our back to back Loki Myth and Snorri historymakers episodes and the three week bonanza of Egypt & Mummy videos this fall – so we're looking at more opportunities for themed video pairings this year.

We're also in the early stages of developing a new video format! We've had a lot of fun discussing film and TV with our Detail Diatribes, and we want to find a way to make that work with books, going beyond summary and really getting into what makes our favorite classics so engaging. It'll take some brainstorming and experimenting, but we're hoping to have an episode of this mysterious new show before too long.

Outside of videos, we had so much fun streaming Skyrim for our New Year's charity stream that Red is already looking forward to more Skyrim livestreams in 2025. Exact timing will depend on video production schedules etc, but we're hoping to have a more regular cadence of livestreams.

Shiny things in the real world!
Outside of the channel, the Big Event on both of our calendars is the launch of our respective BOOKS! The physical release of Aurora Volume 1 is currently slated for July, and the Veneziad should be getting shipped out late summer as well. Depending on production schedules, it's theoretically possible for both books to launch within the same month or even the same week, which would be hilarious.
Jokes aside, these books represent the culmination of years and years and years of work by both of us, and we're beyond thrilled to bring them to you, in print(!!!) this year. Your excitement for the work we do on the channel week after week is what gave us the confidence to try these projects, and the overwhelmingly positive response to Aurora and The Veneziad has been a dream come true. It inspires us want to make more – After these books land on your bookshelf this year, we're already looking forward to what's next. (If I wasn't a coward I'd write "The Veneziad 2: Re-Ven-geance", but I have other plans...)

But we've also got Pins! We're continuing the tour through the Zodiac with Sagittarius, Capricorn, and Aquarius, likely launching in one batch around Valentine's day – we're aiming to have it so you can buy each one individually but get a discount for getting all 3. Afterwards we'll have Pisces, then Aries, and that'll be the zodiac all rounded out! Of course, the are more constellations in the sky, like Perseus, Pegasus, and Andromeda, Hydra, and tons else that would look sick as hell in the Dark-Blue-With-Glowy-Stars style Red does for the constellation pins – but there are also more Greek deities, more Egyptian, Norse, and Mesopotamian, plus whole pantheons we haven't yet explored in Mesoamerica and East Asia (Journey To The West pins, anyone?)
And this is actually what we want to turn over to you! Once we finish the Zodiac, we have a bunch of ideas, but we don't know what to do first. Let us know what pins you want to see from us this year with the poll down below. (Edit: I meant to set this to multiple choice but I can't change it after the fact, so if you like multiple options, leave a comment!)

Last bit of logistics is the next few days we'll be turning over our Patreon from Per-Creation to Per-Month. I'll drop a separate post in the coming week with relevant updates.

See you in 2025! 
And that's that! We're beyond excited for the videos, books, streams, pins, and overall fun times this year will have in store, and we're beyond grateful for your help towards making it possible. Because of support from community members like you, we don't need to contort our channel to catch the algorithm or resort to clickbait – we can just focusing on making the most fun, insightful, and exciting videos we can, trusting that there's a community of people ready to learn and share in these amazing stories from across time and around the world.

Cheers all, and happy 2025.
-Blue