NEW YEAR'S SEASONAL UPDATE!

Hello everybody! Happy New Year's Eve, and welcome to a big end-of-year OSP seasonal wrap-up and 2020-sneak-peek!

We'd like to start by thanking you all for your support of our channel. The fact that you're on Patreon reading this means that you really care about the work we do, and whether you're new to our channel or have been a fan for years, Red and I are so glad to have you here!

We've had a fantastic year here on the channel. In addition to crossing the massive milestone of One Million Subscribers (that's a heckin' big number), our Patreon page has swelled to over 1,200 supporters, and we have over 31,000 followers on Twitter. Meanwhile, the OSP Subreddit has over 3,500 active users, and our Discord contains a staggering 7,500 participants (7,000 of which have been doing the prayer hands emoji in Blue's Office nonstop for the past several months). It's incredible to us just how diverse and robust our community has become, and we're so thankful that so many of you choose to spend parts of your days watching and discussing the work we do!

This has been a very busy year for us — We switched our channel merch over to a new Redbubble shop, we launched our Discord server, met new friends on-and-offline, and made a LOT of videos. In 2019 we published over 75 videos, with 52 mainline videos every Friday morning and over 20 bonus videos! We did a lot of content experimenting in 2019, with 7 di-VINEs, 8 Summer Stupidities (5 City Reviews and 3 Movie Reviews), and 5 History-Makers. We're also planning how we can retool our new In A Minute series to maximize the educational and entertainment value (slow boi blue can only talk so fast). Beyond the new types of content we've launched, we've been sticking to our guns with 19 History Summarized, 11 Trope Talks, 16 Livestreams (including a full God of War playthrough), and 15 Myth & Literature videos  — plus 5 cross-channel collaborations! In the coming year, we're looking forward to giving you more of the videos you love, while finding new ways to make you laugh and learn! We work hard here at OSP, but man oh man do we have an incredibly rewarding job.

Outside of OSP-proper, Red and I have been hard at work on some external projects! In March I published Volume II of my Philosophy Book and Red is now on chapter 5 of her original fantasy webcomic Aurora! — (New pages every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday!)
(I also wanted to mention here that due to scheduling conflicts some technical difficulties, I will likely not be contributing videos and articles to the Armchair Historian website. Things may change in the future to make it possible, but for now, the timing and logistics just aren't right.)

On a business-y side note, we're always working to be responsible with our brand-sponsorships, and want to be transparent. For many YouTube creators, sponsorships are necessary to the long-term survival of a channel. But we are lucky enough to have supporters like you, who provide us with a financial safety-net and allow us to be selective with the brands we promote — that's why we can safely ignore the literal dozens of sponsor emails from Raid Shadow Legends we get. In 2019 we've partnered with Audible, Campfire, Squarespace, World Anvil, Crunchyroll, the Great Courses Plus, and NordVPN. Due to data security reasons we won't get into here, we chose to terminate our contract with NordVPN two videos early, because we did not feel comfortable continuing to promote the product (for contractual reasons, our prior integrations with NordVPN stayed up). In 2020 we want to be extra selective with our sponsors, and take more of that usual sponsor time thanking you wonderful people here on Patreon. Okay, icky business stuff done, just wanted to let you all know where we stand on this issue.

We've got a big 2020 ahead of us! You can expect many more Trope Talks, History, Myths, and Streams (those Renaissance Italian cities aren't going to tour themselves!), but keep an eye out for the continuation of our India and Byzantine Empire series, a two-parter on the history of England and the British Empire, as well as a look at the Sci-Fi landmark Stranger in a Strange Land, and a Mythological deep dive into the story and origins of Loki! We'll be celebrating subscriber milestones with many more di-Vines, and we're looking forward to growing our playlist of History-Makers — This series has quickly become our most popular historical content on the channel! A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.

And this is where Red and I turn things over to you. We've listed several options of famous historians, writers, and philosophers to discuss in future episodes of History-Makers, and we'd love to hear your favorites! Please Vote! And if you have any suggestions for influential writers whom you'd like to see on History-Makers, please leave them in a comment below!

So, with 2019 coming to a close, we'd like to thank you all so much for lending us your valued time, and express our deepest gratitude for the support you give our channel. It's because of all of you that we're able to make these videos and make a positive impact on people's lives all around the world.
You're all champions, have an awesome New Year and a fantastic 2020!

-Blue and Red