Genuinely, why?
Yesterday I was looking through this subreddit when I came across two threads, each asking for fics where Dany either fails or succeeds in her conquest of Westeros respectively. This ordinarily would nothing unusual, some people like certain characters while others do not and people will read what they want to.
But what I was struck by was just how different the comment sections of those two threads were. In the thread asking for fics where Dany got defeated, the comments were mostly relevant to the topic and plenty of fic recommendations were provided. The other thread felt much more hostile, and all the comments were removed. I've noticed this in some other threads as well, such as one asking for fics where the Starks fail to retake the North (that was a mess of a thread) and couldn't help but wonder why there was such a difference.
People disliking the protagonists of franchises is not new, but both Dany and the Starks are the protagonists here, and they have done questionable things throughout the story, coerced or otherwise. I was just wondering why such a extreme difference exists and why the fanbase either defends or hates certain characters so rabidly (Dany and the Starks are not the only characters where I have seen this, but those two groups are where it is the most apparent). I have always thought the most interesting part of fanfiction is exploring different interpretations of a franchises' world and characters in different settings and so the extreme pushback to any negative (or even just not positive) portrayal of the Starks comes across as extremely odd to me.