Peter,
I want you to know that before you became super popular and everyone was like, "OMG Tyrion Lannister!", I was a fan of yours. What an outstanding job you did in Elf! (Yes, he was in Elf. Figure it out, people.) Granted, that's really the only thing I remember you from, and I only remembered you after you were introduced to the general public as the intelligent, tortured, misrepresented dwarf brother of Cersei Lannister, but let's be completely honest here: I was still on the bandwagon before it had wheels. Now that the Game of Thrones world has expanded to people outside of the fantasy realm, the wheels spin so quickly and intensely that they are about to fall off, and of that, Peter, I'm afraid.
I'm too young to die. I've got too much ahead of me, too much spunk. Too much rage. Way too many jobs left undone, and not enough revenge had. Just like you, Peter! How similar we truly are. That is, if you're anything like the character you play. And that's why I'm writing you this letter, Peter. Because you've inspired me, in a deep and meaningful way, right when I needed it most. By the way, can I call you Peter?
After watching tonight's Game of Thrones episode, I couldn't get you or Tyrion out of my head. I struggled deeply with many questions:
Why is Tyrion's scar at the forefront of my thought? (Fuck you, Ser Mandon.)
Why am I so captivated by his character, especially the last several weeks?
What is it about Tyrion that makes me feel like I already know him as a personal friend?
How can I meet Peter Dinklage? Will he like me? What will he wear when that day comes?
Now, I'm not sure I can answer these questions fully, or even accurately-- but I do have some speculative answers. Peter, if it is okay with you, I'd like to share said answers with you and the world. It just feels better when I get things off my chest.
Your scar. That unsightly, unfair scar. I believe, without getting extremely intimate, that this is on my mind primarily because it is just so damn large. It looks like it hasn't healed at all since Season 2, and that makes me extremely upset. Tyrion did NOT deserve that lashing-- and if you have ever personally faced bodily injury such as this, Peter, then I hope that he or she has been put in the ground.
Every week, I am humbled by how much emotion you channel into Tyrion's character. The way your mouth twisted into a crooked line of anger and sadness when Shae betrayed you in court was nearly unbearable to watch. It was almost as if you actually had the same hole in you, Peter, that Shae ripped into Tyrion. How else can I explain your visible, visceral display of raw pain? If you don't mind me asking, have you ever felt that way? Has someone in your past done you so wrong that you were able to tap into it, into that buried area of your soul, just for that split second as the beautiful Sibel Kekilly turned brutally monsterish, lying like the whore that she is? (Sorry, Sibel. No hard feelings; but that was a bitch move.)
If your past is so, I hope your heart has healed-- at least more than your scar. And I know you didn't ask, but if you must know, I've felt pain like that before. While I wasn't ever verbally betrayed in court, I was certainly betrayed in the name of love. In my freshman year of college, I was head-over-heels obsessed with a guy who essentially used me to get over an ex. Maybe I should have had a clue, maybe his forgery was undetectable. In any event, it sure felt real; I lost so much time and energy hoping and wishing the future with him that I'd concocted in my head would reveal itself as truth that I wouldn't have known the difference. Jesus, did he fool my sorry ass. Looking back on it now, I would bet with my non-existent savings account that he loved me back, but he was just too comfortable going back to what he knew. And that conversation, while it didn't take place in a courtroom, twisted my tongue into a scepter of doubt and self-loathing for a long time. I clearly wasn't worthy of mutual, romantic affection. It hurt like fuck, Peter. I know you must be wondering, did I get over it? The honest-to-God truth is that yes, I did-- and thank you for asking. But whenever I remember it, God damn, do I remember.
Peter, I realize that I'm writing this letter to you partially in the name of Tyrion, but realize: I appreciate you for you. In fact, please take my cross-references as a sign of my recognition of your superior acting skills. How perfect! That last sentiment brings me to my sort-of-answer for my third question. No, you're not really my friend. No, Tyrion is not really my friend. But damn it all, Peter, if I don't feel like you are sitting right next to my pajama-ed ass each Sunday, spilling your guts and being all sorts of anecdotal about how your asshole father has hated you since your birth. It's almost like we are having a sleepover, but I can't turn to tell you that "You shouldn't blame yourself for your mother's death!" or, "I understand why you've used sex and alcohol as cures for the emptiness in your being all these years!" simply because YOU'RE NOT HERE.
Unfortunately, that is something I can do nothing about, unless you can help me answer my last question: How can we meet up, Peter? You've no idea what that meeting would mean to me. We're from the same mold. We harbor similar pains. We've both been bullied, teased, flat-out tortured because of how we look.
HOW WE LOOK. Are you fucking kidding me? You play the most intelligent person in Westeros and I've got a creative heart with an unlimited capacity for emotion-- and people have judged us because of how we look? I'm talking beyond Tyrion here, now. There were times in your life where you were treated differently because of your size, I'm sure of it. And for that, I'm sorry. But isn't that all the more reason we should meet? I could tell you about the time my best friend's boyfriend bestowed me with the honor of a genus and species, Vampiris Rodentia (you wouldn't believe the size of my front teeth), and maybe about the time I was kicked out of the "hott girls club" in Elementary school (yes, Elementary school) because I went to a sleepover with a ripped nightgown and my friends thought I was poor. We could exchange all of our stories over French roast or loose leaf Rooibos tea, laughing them into oblivion and pretending mutually that they haven't made us into the inevitably insecure, self-deprecating, humorously emotional, loving and open persons that we are today. And the waitress would refill our mugs for free over and over again, because you're you.
Doesn't that sound nice, Peter? Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. Who is to say you would even find me charming? A girl can dream, but let me tell you-- I generally have a way with people, especially people named Peter Dinklage. I could wear a patterned sundress, and you could wear khaki shorts with a T-shirt that says, "F*** The Lannisters" on it. Or maybe you'd wear a blazer, with a button-down shirt and no tie (because the café we would be at would clearly be social-casual).
Okay. Enough is enough. I've written you this letter, and I feel much better about myself. Even if you never read it, I hope somehow you obtain satisfaction from knowing that you were the inspiration behind what will be the rest of my life. You were my first blog entry, a blog that I hope to take excerpts from and compile into my first book. It's almost 1am, and I've been writing for two hours. To you. That's more than I have written in one sitting since last summer. And I call myself a writer? I say I have big dreams? I say I want to publish? I say I want to quit teaching, I say to hell with administrators who are stripping our schools of the very core of education--individuality-- and yet I sit, waiting, not writing, for what? Someone ELSE to write you a letter? Because I'm afraid of failure? That no one will read or be interested in what I have to say?
No. Not this time. This time I'm getting little sleep, and I'm taking the plunge into something new. Even if this is only the beginning of a grueling, painful, scary, tumultuous exit plan, I've never known a happy ending that came without that type of beginning.
And there it is-- yet another similarity Peter. You've got an exit plan, this season, in the form of Oberyn helping Tyrion. I'm truly hoping that your character's happy ending finally comes (or some version of it) and that the same gratification he might feel by beating his own family at his own game can somehow be channeled into your personal life after you act your way through Season 4. Because I haven't read the books, I take the risk of sounding foolish-- but I have a good feeling about this one. Just like I have a good feeling about this blog, this exit plan, my next risk.
In closing, I'd like to thank you, Peter. In one hour, you managed to remind me that life is just too fucking short to be anything but happy. Not content, not satisfied, but happy. And my version of happy is not in a formulaic note-taking template, it isn't in a gridded daily lesson plan; it is not in the dramatic antics of complacent coworkers, it isn't in the rare moments of gratitude I receive from my students at school. For me, it is in what I'm doing now. Writing this letter to you, hoping people will read it, and knowing you never will.
And you know what? Finally, because of something intangible and subconscious, I'm okay with that.
With much love and appreciation,
Lindsay M. Coffta
p.s. I've decided you should wear the blazer.
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