If there is one thing writing for AfterEllen has taught me, it’s that queer women have a nearly infinite store of goodwill, faith, and optimism when it comes to our stories. When we catch even the barest suggestion that a character on a television show might be like us, we press that show to our collective chest like a child with a teddy bear. We nurture it, forgive its flaws, rally behind its creators, rescue it from cancellation.

But if there are two things writing for AfterEllen has taught me, it’s that writers, producers, and showrunners have no qualms at all about taking our faith and our love and our loyalty and shoving it right back in our faces. Sure, they love us when we offer nothing but praise. They collect the GLAAD awards like Greek gods courting temple sacrifices. They eagerly repeat the stories of how their characters gave real life people the courage to come out. They pat themselves on the back so hard and so often it’s a wonder they’re not all in a constant state of cramp.

But when we dare to object, when we express fatigue or frustration with being force-fed the same tired cliches again and again, then the same queer women who formed a vital part of their fan base become a nuisance. When we complain, they call us shrill. And when we try to sneak the characters under our T-shirts and spirit them away to the worlds of Tumblr or fan fiction, places we know we can at least keep them safe, they call us crazy. (The language of denigrating fandom sounds a lot like the language of denigrating all women with an opinion, you might notice. The idea that the fans of a show might be the best people to offer intelligent, critical insights into it never seems to be considered by anyone.) I’ve seen it so often, I should really be used to it.

You know, every once in a while I ask myself if I don’t take all this too seriously, if it isn’t, at the end of the day, just TV. After all, LGBT people the world over face persecution, discrimination, and death. Would my time and emotional energy not be better spent worrying about those problems and not the death of imaginary lesbians? But then I remember something: that the greatest export of the western world is culture. Our shows and movies reach people and places that I will never go, and talk to people whose languages I will never speak. Stories like this one find people in their secret hearts and whisper to them that there is hope.

There is hope that you can find love and acceptance and a piece of happiness. These stories don’t just find gays, they find the parents and siblings and friends of gays, who can learn to love a character and then take that love with them out into the real, actual world. That’s the magic of stories; they are lights in the world. Kate Mackenzie was a light. The love she shared with Caroline, as older women, as an interracial couple, but above all, as people whose love felt real and true and vital, was a light. For reasons I cannot understand, for reasons I do not want to understand, that crucial beam of hope has been extinguished. And that’s a tragedy. But I have to believe it’s changing. I have to believe that smart and kind and funny people out there, even at this moment, are lighting candles faster than the Sally Wainwrights of this world can blow them out.