Reindeer, I think I understand the distinction that you're making, but I can't for the life of me figure out why it's a distinction that is so important to make.
...stuff...
There's a rather fundamental difference between, "I wouldn't want to be friends with Iago," and "Iago is a shitty human being."
Maybe Iago is a shitty human. I doubt most people here care. But, imagine for a moment you do. You like Iago, and think "shitty human" is a bit much.
Now imagine there's an open ended discussion of Iago at your favorite hang out, and at least once an hour someone shows up to loudly discuss how shitty a human being Iago is.
Now imagine that every week, the people who were loudly proclaiming Iago's shitty human-being-ness return to say pretty much the same thing.
Now, imagine that after three weeks of this, the Iago hate club dials it back to about three times a day. You think, you can hack it, but the very next day an hourly dissertation on the general shittiness of Othello starts up. You don't even care for Othello, but you don't care if anyone hate him, either. But it keeps happening. In droves. The same people. Over and over, they tell you how much they don't like Iago or Othello, but hardly ever say anything about the story or how the traits they don't like fit into the play. It's just very important for them to tell you that Iago or Othello is a shitty person.
Almost none of this discussion is about how these assessments of the characters impact the story. "I wouldn't want Iago/Othello?etc as friend" is an end to itself. The whole reason for the soliloquy.
If someone praises and aspect of Iago's style and how it set up a deeper issue, it will get an "Iago sucks" in response. When you say, hey.. Maybe that's a bit much, you get "Literary criticism!" When you say, "but none of these people is actually discussing the story, but "I hate Iago," you get "LITERARY CRITICISM!!!!1111111ONE"
NOT ONLY that, but you can't unhear/ignore the hourly interjection because someone always engages the complainer, up to and including quoting everything the person said, verbatim, before responding... often quoting all of the thing other people said in response.
It's kinda like that.