@FelRes:
I agree with your thoughts on debate, I think it's good to offer feedback toward one another on each others' thoughts. My point is that I don't really find the debate very constructive in a lot of cases. I don't think that insults are a good thing, but I feel like shallow character analysis is just a roundabout way of avoiding that while getting the same message across. I say this because some of you guys(not you you're chill) get passive aggressive. Like you see debate for off-hand silly comments, and I wonder why is there a debate there at all. It's great to talk about stuff, but some people are just blatantly starting debate to show off their creative writing knowledge in instances where it offers nothing. Or even worse, they start getting super arbitrary. This is mostly in regard to character discussion btw, not stuff like plot theories.
I completely grasp what you're getting. I've seen plenty of arguments that tend to devolve into having an excuse to get in snarky jabs at other people that are more aimed towards provoking emotions than actually contributing earnest creative thoughts. And because it's in the veil of a constructive debate, you get to get away with it. Especially if you appear to have the winning/more popular argument. And then there are the times where, like you said, people are just waving around random creative writing knowledge to imply that because they know such knowledge, that means their argument is more sound when really it's completely coincidental and it may not even have anything to do with the discussion at hand. If you're really skilled and knowledgable about something, you don't have to wave around titles and arbitrary facts to make it seem like you shouldn't be questioned. You should just have what it takes to win the argument and show why if you're supposedly recognized as being so smart in the first place.
Sometimes, it seems like people only use debates as a means to pretentiously show off how witty they happen to be without fearing themselves getting called out for acting like tools regardless of if they are right or wrong. It happens all of the time in life. And what we do in response to that is bring it to light when we see it, and serve everyone a better example to reciprocate.
And to be honest, I don't care about character uniqueness. It matters in some places obviously like main characters and major antagonists and whatnot, yeah, but then it's brought up for other characters for seemingly no reason other than to point out they aren't main characters in a context that doesn't involve proposing they become main characters. To which, it's like, "yeah of course". But then it starts slipping to make it so not being unique makes a character a bad character, regardless of whether that's important for their actual role.
I can agree that using uniqueness as a measure of if a character is bad rather than just a preference can often be the wrong way to go about things. However, that is a very wide-ranged topic that varies to the point that I can't really say uniqueness can't be used effectively as a means to criticize the quality of a character. It all depends on the context of the discussion. Like the overall themes and tone of a group they belong to or the type of arc/society/race/inspiration they embody. Especially if you think the author has accomplished better results in other similar circumstances. And then there are characters that can have traits and looks which are extremely repetitive and uncreative, although that is not to say a character that is not unique is automatically thrown into that extreme rather than a middle ground.
But I get what you're saying. Those are valid thoughts and I agree. Although as a self-esteemed fan, critic, and creative writer, I always value character uniqueness if it's possible for something to be legitimately improved. I won't let it get out of hand if my expectations aren't exactly met, of course.
To give an example, I think that Oda could have made Carrot more pudgy to resemble the actual chubby anatomy of a rabbit than going for his slim hot hourglass figure design he tries to give to a lot of his female designs. All of the male designs in the Mink tribe look so diverse and authentic to the animal species they embody, but all of the female designs have reused figures and "beautiful" average human-liking faces. I would have definitely appreciated Wanda getting more canine features like having some fangs so she actually looks like a dog instead of potentially being confused for a squirrel Mink at first glance.
But, like I said, I'm not going to use that as an excuse to automatically label everything about these characters as being bad. And I CERTAINLY won't insult people who reasonably like these characters. That's stupid lol, and misses the point constructive criticism and confuses it for what is really looking for an excuse to solely disparage something to sound cool.
I'm not saying this is all discussion at all - if it was, I wouldn't be here reading, there's plenty of interesting stuff - I'm just saying it's prevalent, dumb, and repetitive.
Agreed.