17: Loping Away
But we've marked our territory so we can return.
Hey there, o’ alert ones! It has been a looooong while since I’ve sent one of these here Exner Alerts out to you. As I check my notes here I see it’s been… since April! Yikes! Hopefully that’s not so long that you’ve completely forgotten about me.
Normally I’d go into a long diatribe about why I’ve been absent for so long, and I probably will eventually, but I think I’ll save that for a future Alert. For now I’m just going to send off the Alert I had saved in my drafts, written some 4 months ago! Doesn’t that sound fun? Okay, here we go!
Whoa, we're half way there
Whoooaaa oh, livin' on a prayer
Take my hand, we'll make it, I swear
MoonRise is officially on its mid-season hiatus. Meaning no new episodes for a while as Cem and I work to finish up Season 1. We’ll be back before too long though, and Hell’s coming with us!
Okay, it’s actually just Kam and Anula that’s coming, and really they’re leading the way, but I’ve always wanted to say that. My computer screen is super intimidated right now.
As we closed in on the midpoint of Season 1 Cem and I started talking about how we’d let our readers know what was going on. I’ve noticed that a lot of Webtoon series tend to go on hiatus and don’t say anything about it or when they might return. And while that might work for those creators, Cem and I wanted to take a little time to work up something that communicated our intentions to our audience. And thus…
I often say that everything I write is with intention. I’m not often just throwing something in for the heck of it, although that can be fun too from time to time. And so that general philosophy applies to this image as well. Cem drew Kam and Anula in a full sprint to let our readers know they’re on their way back as fast as they possibly can be. Even the text we chose, “MoonRise is Coming Back” is intended to indicate that we’re not just gone… we’re making an effort to get back to them because we’ve got more story to tell.
When exactly are we coming back? Now that’s a great question! But one I refuse to answer because I can’t definitively say. That’s why we left it all vague in the image above!
What I can say is that Cem and I want to finish up Season 1 before we return so we don’t have to go on any additional, unplanned hiatuses… and we’re getting pretty close!
In fact, we’re so close that all our talk about and progress towards the end of Season 1 has actually got us thinking more about Season 2! We know for a fact that we want to do a second season of MoonRise, and so Cem and I have been planning out exactly what might happen during it. We’d already come up with a bunch of ideas for the future of the series, but now we’re actually starting to figure out how to incorporate them into the second season itself on the off-chance that it’s our last.
Luckily for us, it seems like Webtoon is going to allow us to at least get to the second season finish line, but whether we’re able to go past that is up in the air.
Another aspect of whether we go beyond Season 2 or not is the type of attention the series is drawing from the Webtoon audience, and so Cem and I have been pondering ways to boost that attention. Do we beg? Do we plead? Do we threaten?
Threatening was my choice, but Cem, sweetheart that he is, vetoed me. What we ultimately decided on was some neat little graphics we could add to the end of episodes that urge our readers to click like, subscribe and to rate the series. So! For the first time anywhere here’s a special bonus just for readers of the Exner Alert… a look at the MoonRise “Shoot for the Moon” campaign!
Cem outdid himself with this one, I think.
Especially considering the, uh, ahem…. reference image I provided for him.
Hey, y’know what! That’s not bad! What do I even need to team up with an artist for, am I right? I can do this webtoon thing by myself with ease.
I’m only kidding, Cem. Never leave me!
As mentioned, once MoonRise returns from hiatus these panels will be appearing at the tail end of all future episodes. And if possible, we may try and sneak ‘em into the old episodes as well. So keep your eyes peeled for that, and for more Exner Alerts with news on Skullgirls, MoonRise and whatever else I’ve got going on to come!