FALL SEASONAL UPDATE!

Hop outside and jump on some leaves because it’s FAAAALLLLL!!!!! (Romans beware)

That means we’ve got another seasonal update for you with what’s new and next for OSP! This past summer was a weird stretch of time, because we crossed the fabled threshold of Two Million Subscribers, while I (Blue) had a prolonged recovery from Long Covid exhaustion that I only very late in the summer realized was in fact long covid. Not yet solved, but getting better. Such is life. Suffice to say that after an August with a fun but very nonstandard upload schedule, it’s good to be back into our customary video cycle!

Along with our 2 Million milestone, we released a special set of Red and Blue pins to commemorate the occasion. If you missed them or any of our 9 previous pin releases, you’ll have a chance this November and December to snag any stragglers for your collection of Olympian shinies (and Loki). In fact, at the end of this year we’re celebrating 10 YEARS of OSP on YouTube. Yup, 10 years since Red first posted the Much Ado About Nothing video, time flies. As such, we’re going to be doing a Very Special and Very Limited sale of GOLD-BACKED PINS. The pins we’ve made so far all use black metal for the edge framing, but these bad bois are going to be ringed in gold and absolutely pop with style. They’ll be on sale through the middle of November, culminating in the Black-Friday–Cyber-Monday weekend, then we’ll be selling our standard stock of pins through the rest of December. We ordered a fixed stock of golds, and we’re envisioning this as a one-and-done to celebrate the insanity of 10 years on YouTube. So if you’re jazzed about the gold, the Gold Pins will be on offer from November 11th through 28th, and that’s it. We’re running this sale a little early to make absolutely certain all pins arrive before all holidays. We’ll also have discounts for ordering multiple pins, plus a coupon code that all patrons can use to get 25% off across the board with any order, big or small. More on that in November.

Stream-side, we’ve been having a ton of fun with the after dark streams as of late, between Red’s Solo Hours, the tier lists with Red and Indigo, and the rare occasions where Blue joins in on the chaos. We’re still going to keep the gaming streams for big celebratory occasions with large groups (like the Stray stream this summer and the new years eve blowouts), but I’ve got to level with you all and say that streaming games just isn’t my skillset. I want to be good at it, I really do, but there’s just something about splitting my focus between gaming and talking that tanks it for me. That said, we will be having another New Years Eve stream at the end of the year, and before then we’ll be doing a HALLOWEEN STREAM, reading the scottish play itself, MacBoy! Specifically, Red and Blue will be playing the roles of MacBoy and MacDuff completely straight, BUT a small smattering of special guests will be playing all of the other roles as wacky as possible, with the goal of trying to make us two break character. I don’t think anyone is more excited than Indigo, but we’re pretty dang jazzed about this. It’ll happen sometime in the last days of October, exact Date & Time TBD.

Meanwhile, off-channel, Red’s webcomic Aurora has just wrapped its 18th chapter, which brings a soft coda to Arc 1. If you’re been thinking of reading her comic but didn’t know when to start, right now is perhaps one of the best times to jump in since the comic first debuted – because this is when I (Blue) am finally reading through it all. Hype!

For this season’s videos, we’ve got some fun ones, with the Saga of Grettir the Strong, the myth of Greece’s Daedala festival, and a folktale about CATS (!!!!), while history-side we’ve got a HistoryMakers on Virgil, the history of Rome After Empire, a Detail Diatribe retrospective of OSP after 10 years, 3 Dumber Italy Stories, and finally the history of either St Mark’s Basilica or the Tribune Tower in Chicago, undecided. Sprinkled amongst all that will be more After Dark streams, the Halloween MacBoy reading, and the New Years Eve gaming-with-guests bonanza.

Finally, this season’s poll is about a tier reward expansion. One thing we’ve wanted to do for a long time is take the gorgeous art pieces Red draws every month as patreon exclusives and put them in people’s hands, easily and cost-effectively... somehow. Discussions with patreon hit a couple snags, but with the help of our friends at Crowdmade (they make the pins), now we do have a way to make this happen.

Our idea was: We’ll send all Trickster Deity patrons a pack of three 3x6 inch prints, on cardstock, of the various patreon-exclusive drawings red has done, every season. 3 prints seasonally is like one print per month, but it saves on shipping, wastes fewer envelopes, and it’s more fun to open a pack of 3 than just one. We would need to collect Tricksters’ mailing addresses for this, so we’d amend the Trickster Deity tier to have Patreon request an address – then anyone who likes can opt into receiving the prints. We’ll collect addresses in a spreadsheet, send it to Crowdmade, and they’ll send you prints every season. If you’re a Trickster Deity and don’t want to give an address, you 100% will not have to.
The corollary effect is we would then open up digital access to the monthly drawings to all Achilles' Blanket Fort peeps in the $10 tier. Our Tricksters get the veritable treat of receiving art in their hands, and Achilles' Blanket Fort can now enjoy it digitally, wins all around! If this sounds like a plan, we can get this up and running in time for the New Year, and potentially expand this to stickers down the line.

So the question we put to you is: y’all want some fancy art prints?

Happy Fall!

-Blue