And it is virtually universal that in "storygame" play, fudging dice rolls and hand waving NPC reactions to get the best outcome for the "story" is entirely acceptable.
I'd say that's quite opposite. Storygaming culture was quite strong on limiting GM's power. It was designed mechanics that should keep narrative umph on track, not DM's fudging.
However in OP's culture - when it's not about story as such, but about PC's spotlight (and it's not the same) - sure fudge the dice so Player won't be sad about character dying or losing.
But both immersive and storygaming cultures as described IMHO were always fond about "playing to loose" because experience matters, not some... victory.
So PC's are perceived as having, and treated with a degree of "plot armor".
IMHO fudging and "GM telling a story" is one of the reasons PC death is taken very badly in new school/OC/whatever players.
Because the GM is now Not Neutral - so PC death is taken as a Personal punishment. Not a bad roll of the dice!
If the DM is "in charge" of the story, then any character death is the DM's responsibility on some level, and it becomes personal.
That I think it's more reaction to Trad school than to Story school.
Trad school was arguably the most to promote railroading for sake of prewritten scenario, and if PC's were just dragged along, tough shit.
GM's have last word even if he's an asshole.
So that is why when they happen to find themselves in a hard combat - all rolling out in the open, and the 'random vagaries of the dice' kill the character - It will still be seen as a personal punishment by the GM for putting the players in a situation where their "plot armor" could not help them.
As a result they get snowflake-tears, rage-quit, angry-mad.
The overblown reactions to PC death by the "story" crowd is proof IMHO that they take PC death as a personal affront. In core 5e gameplay resurrections are not exactly uncommon, and yet the overly emotional reactions of PC death by the "story" crowd remain...
Alas this is not crowd caring about story, this is crowd caring about their own snowflakes.
It's interesting how various cultures operate on what is called I guess bleed in this article.
Like both Classic and OSR had bleed of Player into Character, because Player Skill often trumps Character abilities as shown (gamist and anti-simulationist perspective I'd say).
In Immersive it's Character that's meant to bleed into Player for Experience's Sake.
In OP you have weird mix of two, but done mostly for self-gratification. In a way I can see in that natural evolution of classic.
Like classic was probably stronger influencer of cRPGs, not Trad because more advanced narratives were harder to put into cRPG, while looting and powergaming - damn those are salt and mead of multiple games. But video games have certain invulnerability brought by replayability. Save games. And so on. And then you take whole generation who first learned about RPGs from video games and put them on a table... and voilla. Disaster ready.
Although as was written by some people in comments, roots are earlier than Critical Role, or even common cRPGs, I think always for some people playing will lead to parasocial relationship with own Character. Just today I've read post from girl who decided to retire her flamboyant bard character, because other player hate bard doing... well doing whatever any 5e bard do during gameplay (God I hate bards)... and it hurts her to much her bard is mocked by other characters for trying to seduce and compliment enemies during combat, so she's gonna take another character without such emotional ties to.