Aaron Sorkin: 1, Casual Lexicon: nil

I've been aware of The West Wing for a long time. I've even seen a fair bit of it here and there, but I've never seen all of it, nor watched episodes in order, and so when I noticed the whole series had finally gone streaming on Netflix, that was it.

Decision made. Mainliney bingewatching behavior engage.

Well, mostly I'm hitting it a couple of episodes at a time, mostly in the evenings or on weekend mornings when I've got a couple of hours to have downtime and knit, and it's so good for me in these weird, unpredictable ways.

Case in point: the word "okay" is now in my secret fannish lexicon. It started with Danny Concannon (whose lines in S1 are about 97% basically just this word, I think) and has branched out to every "okay" in the universe.

Which is to say, Sorkin has managed to make the most bland and invisible of words a Glowing Goddamn Beacon to my brain. "Okay" is like "said." It should essentially be invisible under normal operating conditions. Instead, it is now a Thing in my skull. Like, every time I hear the word, I wonder what the subtext is. Every time I say the word, I get a little zing of nerd happiness, like I'm secretly communicating a thing.

I am probably not communicating a thing.

I am pretty sure I don't care that I'm not actually communicating a thing.

It's tiny. It's ridiculous. Like, this has to be one of those writer things that doesn't make sense to the rest of the planet, because I never hear people having this problem. And, predictably, I am enjoying it immensely because language is fun and weird and the way human beings relate to language and character and media is so unpredictable, and that this tiny thing keeps lighting up my brain is so beautiful.

Things like this are why I fell in love with language.

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This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com