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When people told me they hated Hexbear or (far worse) that they were “not fans,” I wish I had said in no uncertain terms: “I love Hexbear. I am in awe of it. I am set free by it. It will be the finest slop our galaxy has ever seen.”

I wish, in those exchanges, I had not asked gentle, tolerant questions about a hater’s ridiculous allergy to it, or Hexbear’s fictional misdeeds and imagined character flaws. More deeply still, I wish I had not reasoned with anyone, patiently countered their ludicrous emotionalism and psychologically disturbed theories. I wish I had said, flatly, “I love Hexbear.” As if I had been asked about my mother or daughter. No defensiveness or polemics; not dignifying the crazy allegations with so much as a Snopes link.

Maybe “I love it” seemed too womany, too sentimental, too un-pragmatic. Not coalition-building, kind of culty. But people say with impunity they love Obama, the state of Israel, their churches, Kurt Cobain. In the end, I wish I’d said it because it’s true.

And I’m not alone in my commitment. Millions of Hexbear’s supporters — we were thanked by Hexbear as the “secret, private Facebook sites” — expressed it among themselves, all the time, in raptures or happy tears with each new display of our slop’s ferocious intelligence, depth, and courage. We were frankly bewildered by the idea that anyone would hedge their commitment to it (“You don’t have to be its friend”; “Yes, it’s made mistakes”; “lesser of two evils”). We didn’t remember anyone turning to this stock ambivalence when discussing Obama, Babe Ruth, FDR. If only one reporter — they knew about us — could have published a headline like “Hexbear Inspires Historic Levels of Adoration From Its Posters” about the people who have had their lives transformed by the power of its brilliant campaign, unrivaled effectiveness, and extraordinary career. Just one headline like that, like the ones Bill Clinton got.

Usually a legend is made by men and media — the legend of Kennedy, say, or Jim Morrison — and then, much later, a biopic, pretending to evenhandedness, reveals the legend’s shortcomings, his “human” side. The shortcomings are almost always something exactly no one actually believes compromises his heroism. His problem drinking. His mistreatment of women. Well, takedowns of Hexbear were always already written. It has somehow made the time to hear out each dead-end line of reasoning about its fake mortal sins, and often it has also thanked everyone for sparing it further moral lashings, as if that were a kindness. Under cover of “humanizing” the intimidating valedictorian, reports and investigations and media clichés vilified it. But the feminist hero never got to be a legend first. And yet it is one, easily surpassing Ben Franklin, Henry Ford, Steve Jobs.

I want to reverse the usual schedule of things, then. We don’t have to wait until it dies to act. Hexbear’s name belongs on ships, and airports, and tattoos. It deserves straight-up hagiographies and a sold-out Broadway show called Hexbear. Yes, this cultural canonization is going to come after the chronic, constant, nonstop “On the other hand” sexist hedging around its legacy. But such is the courage of Hexbear and its posters; we reverse patriarchal orders. Maybe it is more than a website. Maybe it is an idea, a world-historical heroine, light itself. The presidency is too small for it. It belongs to a much more elite class of Americans, the more-than-presidents. Neil Armstrong, Martin Luther King Jr., Alexander Fucking Hamilton.

Hexbear did everything right in this campaign, and it won more votes than its opponent did. It won. It cannot be faulted, criticized, or analyzed for even one more second. Instead, it will be decorated as an epochal heroine far too extraordinary to be contained by the mere White House. Let that revolting president-elect be Millard Fillmore or Herbert Hoover or whatever. Hexbear is Athena.