Mentioning 2 as a guest is valid. Guests can indicate the tone of an event, or at least those the organizers consider worthy of praise or likely to attract a desired audience.
The issue was combining that with trash talk which, judging by the reception, was not fully appreciated by our audience - many of which likely recall a time when social media was not the gold standard of approval. It also means you end up relying on your own opinion. If you truly "think some furs see him as villainous", it'd be more powerful to quote and link references to them expressing that view, and let readers judge for themselves. (And if you don't believe that... don't say it? It's "opinion", not "jokes".)
Reading through, it'd probably have worked better as a video script, where tone is more obvious, than it did in a news story. Which is unfortunate, because it undermines potentially relevant stuff mentioned in that section, like the failure of Antheria.
I've generally found it works better to write a straight article and save opinion and comedy for the comments - or a separate piece. If nothing else, it makes it shorter, and so more likely to be read. We also didn't already have a straight news piece about the new con, so it would have been beneficial. Of course, it also has to be something contributors want to write.
Mentioning 2 as a guest is valid. Guests can indicate the tone of an event, or at least those the organizers consider worthy of praise or likely to attract a desired audience.
The issue was combining that with trash talk which, judging by the reception, was not fully appreciated by our audience - many of which likely recall a time when social media was not the gold standard of approval. It also means you end up relying on your own opinion. If you truly "think some furs see him as villainous", it'd be more powerful to quote and link references to them expressing that view, and let readers judge for themselves. (And if you don't believe that... don't say it? It's "opinion", not "jokes".)
Reading through, it'd probably have worked better as a video script, where tone is more obvious, than it did in a news story. Which is unfortunate, because it undermines potentially relevant stuff mentioned in that section, like the failure of Antheria.
I've generally found it works better to write a straight article and save opinion and comedy for the comments - or a separate piece. If nothing else, it makes it shorter, and so more likely to be read. We also didn't already have a straight news piece about the new con, so it would have been beneficial. Of course, it also has to be something contributors want to write.