Put the bandaid back on i'm begging you

It is already a questionable narrative choice because it made Piper look bad to a lot of readers—Percy is absolutely beloved, so it alienates Piper from a good chunk of the fanbase. But I think it could have worked had she been accurate in her assessment of Percy’s character, or at least it could have been interesting and defensible narratively (yes, there were always going to be readers who just hated her for not liking Percy and there’s no way around that. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t serve the narrative well). Percy is a very likable character, and although he is truly my favorite character (in anything, ever), we must admit that he is partly so likable because he’s the narrative’s favorite (at least, you know, before his author started openly resenting him lol). And it could have been interesting to see him from a different perspective that exposes more of his flaws, or perhaps views them as genuine flaws rather than endearing traits.

But the reason Piper knocks Percy is actually just because she thinks he looks less impressive than Jason, and that he looks like a troublemaker.

I’ll address the “unimpressive” part first. Yes, it’s annoying if you love Percy, but it’s also bad writing, because it hits with a “we’ve heard this song before.” Because we have! Percy’s story was a zero-to-hero tale. UNLIKE Jason, unlike Thalia, unlike even Luke, Percy is not a character looked to as a de-facto leader. When he first gets to camp, he has bursts of impressive potential, but he is inconsistent. Nobody knows what to make of him, and “the only thing [he] really excelled at was canoeing, and that wasn’t the kind of heroic skill people expected to see from the kid who had beaten the Minotaur.” The campers are explicitly said to be “watching” him and sizing him up. They are expecting more from him, and “the way they stared at [him] made [him] uncomfortable. [He] felt like they were expecting [him] to do a flip or something.” Clarisse targets him because she wants to prove her superiority and dispel the myth that he is “‘Big Three’ material.” He is practically laughed out the door of Cabin Eleven on his first introduction. After getting claimed, he’s ostracized and seen as an inconvenience who brought strife to the rest of the camp. He earns respect through the quest, but we have to rinse and repeat this next summer because of his association with Tyson. And then we rinse and repeat this AGAIN in book 3 because Thalia is older, cooler, a better fighter, has known Grover and Annabeth longer than Percy, and her dad is Zeus. Thalia gets chosen for the quest—Percy gets overlooked, again, and has to sneak onto it, again.

And then we have to consider what he’s like outside of camp—bullied in school, abandoned by the school system and never had a teacher before Chiron believe in him and actually strived to rise to Chiron’s expectations because he was so starved for encouragement, plays basketball in the corner at school dances, never had a single real friend before Grover, insecure about his financial situation, growing up with an overworked single mom and an abusive stepdad who verbally degrades him and makes his life miserable at every turn. Percy is a kid who doesn’t have friends to invite to his birthday party—canonically.

The shift into revered hero really only happens in Book 4, and I think the subtext of it strongly implies that puberty hit him hard that year because all of a sudden he has three different love interests (and one not-so-secret admirer in Nico), and he is blatantly unaccustomed to it because that’s never how it has been for him before. In book 2 he is saying no girl at his school would be caught dead calling his name, [heavily implied that] he is the mocked because Annabeth is out of his league, and then Circe makes him stand in front of a magical body-dysmorphia mirror and dwell on all the things he doesn’t like about himself (imagine ritualistically humiliating a 13-y/o kid in this way as an adult woman. Federal prison. Death penalty!) and in Book 3 he is lamenting that Annabeth is taller than him, and saying he feels uncomfortable talking to Bianca because he gets nervous talking to girls (patently untrue, there are many girls he does not get nervous talking to—but realistic for him to narrate because although he is close with Annabeth, he is more aware of her romantically now and therefore less comfortable with her, and I would argue he mentions it in this scene because he thinks Bianca is attractive and she’s close to his age whereas girls like Thalia, Clarisse, Zoe etc are not ever viewed that way by him). So it truly makes sense when in Book 4, he is absolutely dumbfounded by Calypso’s confession and completely at a loss for how to interact with Annabeth now that she’s made her feelings clear.

In his “hero” career, the shift also happens in Book 4—he has grown as a fighter and is even complimented on this by Luke, he achieves some of his most impressive stunts in this book and shows off his skills in the battle arena, and he’s used by Chiron as a reinforcement to send to the toughest parts of the battle. And the summer after that, because he’s one of the best fighters, he is used all the time on combat missions, like the one with Beckendorf at the start of Book 5. And I really don’t think I have to explain what happened in Book 5, lol.

So. No, Percy wasn’t just granted the revered-hero status because he looks the part—he earned it, with blood, sweat, and tears (literally). And Piper’s commentary on him is that after hearing all about his exploits, he doesn’t look the part. As if we don’t have like four-and-a-half books that already told us that, made all the more familiar by the fact that Percy is his own harshest critic. The other narrators in HOO is see a side of Percy he doesn’t often see in himself—the side we only get glimpses of, such as Rachel’s painting of him killing Anteus or Percy admitting (reluctantly) that he’s slicing through an entire army and laughing at the exhilaration of it. They also sometimes notice a sadness or an anger or an intimidation factor that Percy is often not aware of in himself. Piper, on the contrary, sees only the most surface-level thing, even though she is supposedly so good at reading people that she can interpret Annabeth and Chiron’s silent conversations after only knowing them for a day. So it reads like she’s just being a hater—and I do actually think that’s the correct interpretation of this moment, considering she’s explicitly comparing him to her boyfriend. And honestly, if Piper was just being a hater, then fine—I can accept that her attachment to her own boyfriend overrides her gifts, and that’s all very human and tells you something about Piper’s character.

But what REALLY frustrates me is the “troublemaker” assessment. Again, this is a girl who is good at reading people. A girl who has been bullied in school, and befriended Leo, who has also been bullied in school and abandoned by the institutional school system, sent to a place for kids that nobody wants to deal with. A girl who has ALSO been overlooked by authority figures and gotten into a lot of trouble for misunderstandings. And she is judging Percy and saying she would “[steer] clear [of him]” because she has enough trouble in her life. What annoys me is not so much that she’d avoid him, but that SHE IS WRONG in exactly the way that most of Percy’s authority figures have been wrong about him for his entire life! He is branded as a troublemaker, when he is actually a good kid that falls victim to unfair circumstances. How many times has he been in the wrong place at the wrong time, when he was actually trying to save innocent lives? This is a kid who had a nationwide manhunt started for him at the age of 12 by his abusive stepdad because he seemed like a juvenile delinquent, and guess what, he wasn’t! So it’s super corny to me to hear Piper say this—again, we know from BOOK ONE that Percy’s features have a “brooding look that had always gotten me branded a rebel.” And Piper—again, the character supposedly supernaturally gifted at reading people—falls for it and informs the reader that she would avoid him for that.

Knowing the context (as the average PJO reader ought to), Piper’s opinion comes across as judgmental and shallow. And to be honest, I think that may have been the source for at least some of the outrage—that this just feels wrong and we didn’t appreciate the tone of it, even if maybe people didn’t know why it bothered them so much. Because the reader knows that Piper is wrong. It provokes that same kind of feeling of frustration at the injustice that Percy has to continually endure throughout most of PJO for things that are outside of his control. And I have to say, Piper being a rich kid who intentionally acts out for attention and notably does NOT have the learning disabilities that Percy and MOST demigods do, being the one to mislabel Percy in this way, adds… a layer to this whole interaction that strikes me as icky. I do patently believe this was not the intention of Piper’s assessment, because she does explain that she would avoid him because she had “enough trouble in her life”---as in, she’s not thinking she’s better than Percy, she’s thinking she’s too much like him. But that kind of falls flat considering that she’s wrongfully judging him based on his appearance and that her reasoning doesn’t make sense considering her friendship with Leo. And then she doubles down on the assessment by saying that “she could definitely see why Percy needed Annabeth in his life. If anybody could keep a guy like that under control, it was Annabeth.” This quote reads as so blatantly derogatory to me that it totally overrides any attempt at making it seem like Piper is not being judgmental and condescending here.

This is made more explicit in their exchange with Bacchus, because, in an effort to hype up Piper’s diplomatic skills, Rick has her act shocked at how brazenly Percy speaks towards Bacchus. Sure, it makes sense for her to be taken aback—most people are by how Percy speaks to the gods. But the tone in this passage is that Piper is babysitting Percy (emphasis mine): “Piper had been watching with horrified fascination, the way she might watch a car wreck in progress. Now she realized Percy was not making things better, and Annabeth wasn’t around to rein him in. Piper figured her friend would never forgive her if she brought Percy back transformed into a sea mammal.”

But Piper is completely ignorant to the context behind this exchange. Percy has known Mr. D for five years. He has earned his reluctant respect, has had multiple one-on-one conversations with him, has been called the correct name by Dionysus, has been personally requested to keep his son safe in the war. Dionysus voted yes to make Percy immortal last summer. Meanwhile, Piper has never met Bacchus OR Dionysus. Out of the three people in this scene, she is the MOST ignorant, and yet we’re supposed to accept that she’s the authority. And what is even worse, is that Piper doesn’t realize what Percy already knows: Bacchus literally is too lazy to turn Percy into a dolphin and he’s not making a real threat. Percy knows that because he has tested the boundaries before (and when it became clear that Mr. D was no longer joking, it scared him enough to stop talking). So it’s just not convincing that Percy is in real danger in this exchange or that he needed Piper’s help. What’s more: Bacchus never had any intention of helping them, and Piper is just too slow to realize this, and she will subsequently admit that he was totally unhelpful! And the hilariously ironic cherry on top: later in the book, Percy is the one who successfully recruits Bacchus! It makes her come across as extremely arrogant to think that she would be more equipped at negotiating with a god than Percy, who has much, MUCH more experience doing this than Piper does.

Now, I think that this is a writing problem. Because fine, maybe we could use this moment to confront Piper’s arrogance and the fact that she completely underestimated Percy—but that doesn’t happen. But better yet, we could have used this moment to actually further both of their characterizations, with Piper realizing why Percy has earned so much respect (including from someone like Annabeth, who Piper CLEARLY immensely respects), and perhaps touching on her ever-present feelings of insecurity about not being good enough at diplomacy and feeling totally useless. It doesn’t make sense for Piper to think she’s better than Percy! It simply does not make sense for a character who is chronically self-doubting in their skills! And the reason it doesn’t make sense is because it’s just the author trying to convince us that Piper is just as necessary to the plot as Percy is. It’s even more annoying when Piper’s “diplomacy skills” are just flattering Bacchus’ ego and manipulating him to get what she wants, which is not remotely unique to Piper’s character. Percy and Annabeth do this literally all the time, and will continue to do it in the rest of the HOO series.

And it’s all just so frustrating and honestly kind of sad. Because there was potential for a whole lot of interesting tension between Percy and Piper. Percy resents spoiled rich kids who act out for attention and he’s so used to encountering them that he would peg Piper as one right off the bat. Consider this quote from the beginning of TLT: “The other guys were joking around, talking about their vacation plans. One of them was going on a hiking trip to Switzerland. Another was cruising the Caribbean for a month. They were juvenile delinquents, like me, but they were rich juvenile delinquents. Their daddies were executives, or ambassadors, or celebrities. I was a nobody, from a family of nobodies.” PIPER IS LITERALLY ONE OF THESE KIDS! You’re telling me that the kid who immediately understood that the Hermes cabin was full of neglected kids waiting for calls that would never come, who reminded him of the kids he went to school with—wouldn’t notice that quality in Piper right away? Because he would. But I actually think Percy has grown a lot and confronted some of these feelings of inadequacy around socioeconomic status, primarily through his friendship with Rachel, and he is able to see through the resentment and insecurity to recognize that the parental neglect Rachel suffers is a real problem, despite her being wildly privileged. And this journey started in TLT, where Percy realizes that he’s a far cry from having a “family of nobodies”—actually he, too, has one of the MOST famous and MOST powerful beings in the entire world for a dad, and that his dad doesn’t care about him (if you recall—he had chosen to think his father was dead, because that was less painful to believe, despite the fact that Sally intentionally never said that). And he empathized with the neglect that demigods receive from their incredibly powerful parents: “I thought about some of the kids I’d seen in the Hermes cabin, teenagers who looked sullen and depressed, as if they were waiting for a call that would never come. I’d known kids like that at Yancy Academy, shuffled off to boarding school by rich parents who didn’t have the time to deal with them. But gods should behave better.” And perhaps more on the nose: “I started to understand Luke’s bitterness and how he seemed to resent his father, Hermes. So okay, maybe gods had important things to do. But couldn’t they call once in a while, or thunder, or something? Dionysus could make Diet Coke appear out of thin air. Why couldn’t my dad, whoever he was, make a phone appear?” (I still think Percy accepts the bare minimum from Poseidon because it is simply less painful for him that way so I definitely don’t think he’s healed, but enough to have compassion for other abandoned kids, certainly). 

Percy could have really seen Piper in a way that Piper is used to seeing other people. I truly do think Percy as written in PJO would immediately see Piper’s choices in chopping off her hair and intentionally styling herself in weird clothing for what it really is: insecurity masking as confidence, acting out against her parents, and struggling to find her identity separate from her parents. (Percy is really, REALLY good at picking up on these things in PJO. And he ought to be, because he developed it as a survival skill growing up with Gabe and getting bullied.)

Piper’s writing has serious problems with it, many of which have been discussed in great length and that I don’t think I need to explain here. The only thing I’ll bring up, because I think it’s uniquely related to the Piper/Percy dynamic: it is not sufficiently addressed that Piper is accused of stealing things for fun/attention when she doesn’t actually steal things, and how her race might play a role in that narrative. It is not as simple as Piper being stereotyped by the narrative as a kleptomaniac—because Piper really isn’t and she really didn’t steal the BMW, the dealer gave it to her. But the narrative doesn’t really care about exonerating her. And to make matters much worse, there is not much meaningful reflection about her charmspeak being used for coercion, and how, although she didn’t understand what she was doing, she still got the car by manipulating the dealer with magic. And I bring this up simply to demonstrate that had we gotten to the bottom of Piper’s relationship with her parents and her issues with her own identity, then at least this problem could have been reconciled in a much more nuanced way. And I think that her relationship with Percy is fairly low-hanging fruit for how this could have been explored better, because Piper actually quite similar to Percy in that they’re both ‘kids troubled by unfair circumstances and not because they want to cause trouble,” even though on the surface her antics make her seem like she’s more like Matt Sloan (the bully from SOM who stole his daddy’s care and took it for a joyride).

Imagine Percy getting paternal affection for the first time in his life but then slowly coming to the realization that Gabe was a bully who hated him, but Poseidon is a bully who loves him. Poseidon encouraging Percy's anger and violence because his sons are entitled to be as angry and violent as they want. Poseidon magic-ing him out of trouble for fighting at school because Percy should be allowed to hit whoever he wants!

ooooh okay let's go:

1) Thalia wasn't in the camp she's been in a coma for years and in an act of desperation to get good press Zeus announces she's showing signs of waking up (she's not) (and it doesn't out shine the national manhunt at all) and then when she Actually wakes up a little over a year later the public doesn't believe the news at first bc of it. like they see the front page news about her miraculous recovery and the general public is like "what did Percy do this time"

2) the concept of Jason still getting raised by wolves- normal, non magical wolves this time- is KILLING ME!!! when he eventually gets discovered and rescued, Hera is his biggest supporter in helping him get readjusted to society and everyone is genuinely shocked that she's not Just doing it for good press

3) Hades actually takes custody of Nico and Bianca right away and it's not a big news story. when the press find out about HAZEL, HOWEVER,

4) Mr. D is still In The Family he's just cut off financially and out of the will and he literally does Fine for himself like he's rich in his own right between the strawberry wine vineyards and the camp he owns and runs. but every time he turns up to a family event he acts like he's a street beggar and has the hardest life imaginable. very 'woe is me I'm the only one of my siblings that can't afford TWO yachts' energy lmfao.

5) Kronos had Percy and Annabeth specifically kidnapped bc they were the two weakest spots in The Family- no one knew about Percy, so no one was protecting him, and while Annabeth grew up around the family because of her mom's job she wasn't Related to them and they never thought to extend any protection to her. Grover just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time bc he was tagging along on Percy and Sally's vacation and while Ares was okay with kidnapping and arson for his evil grandfather he decided to not be down for murder. this is why he never killed Percy's annoying ass during their cross country trip even when Percy kept fighting him and ruining his various bombing plans. AND he was mad as hell that Percy kept getting all the credit and being called the terrorist bc none of the reporters seemed to notice Ares was even there lmao

6) Annabeth was definitely missing for at least a week before Athena saw her on the news and Realized lmfao Frederick WAS trying to find her but he was more scared of telling Athena than he was for their daughter's safety

7) Amphitrite was mad about. well everything. but when she found out Sally murdered Gabe she was happy to help cover it up lmao she had a BLAST. she's like damn I married into such a shady family I can't believe I haven't had the opportunity to do this yet

8) Triton and Kym HATE Percy the beef is so immediate but Tyson adores him and Rhodes, who doesn't live at home, is nice when she stops by. Percy is literally more scared in this fuck ass family than he was when he was kidnapped lmao

9) Apollo keeps trying to get Percy to do an 'exclusive interview' with him and Poseidon keeps literally chasing him off

screaming!!

Apollo's only like in his 20s in this and publicly he's just taking a gap year before starting medical school bc Zeus doesn't wanna admit he 'had to' cut off ANOTHER kid. but this means he can't control the narrative of whatever the hell Apollo's doing when it hits the press, so it's all like

Apollo Olympian spotted dumpster diving, seemingly confused of his surroundings

Apollo Olympian has reportedly kidnapped the 12 year old daughter of his father's business rival

Apollo Olympian and cousin Percy Jackson-Olympian seen in high speed car chase with the missing 12 year old girl in the front seat

Apollo Olympian comes clean about affair he had with one of his father's business partners when he was only 16!!

CEO accused of sleeping with Apollo Olympian says the then teen tried to kill him, disputes claims of a relationship

Breaking News: the 12 year old Apollo Olympian kidnapped is actually his cousin who was kidnapped years ago??

like just shit like that and everyone's losing their minds but the only people in the family he has regular contact with are Percy and Jason (minors, not allowed to talk to the media to clear his name) and Thalia (keeps encouraging him to be even more destructive). Artemis is M.I.A. on some "wellness retreat" in the Mediterranean but it later comes out Zeus is keeping her there to be an ass. the only person who really CAN go to the press to explain he's not actually on a crime spree is Rachel, but as she's not In The Family and also regularly creates scandals of her own out of boredom, no one really believes her lmfao.

eventually Apollo gives up and posts like a six hour long YouTube video detailing all the crimes he's caught the Triumvirate red handed of, he has a full blown conspiracy corkboard behind him and looks like he hasn't slept in a year, everyone is losing their God damn MINDS!! by the time his story culminates with him talking about having to fight a giant snake the general public already have their pitch forks and torches out.

2) I just can't stop imagining a Poseidon who hasn't slept in close to 3 weeks because he's been tracking this case trying to find his insane little kid and he like, gets swarmed by paparazzi while coming out of the police station and all they wanna know is why he cheated on Amphitrite and he finally snaps and is like

I'm with you but I don't think Juno and Hera are twins I think everyone in the Olympian family has multiple fake identities for their assorted shady rich people bullshit/emergency situations. She kidnaps Jason and Percy to keep them safe from whatever the fuck her evil grandmother is plotting, they were specifically being targeted so she was just gonna lock them up in a safe house for a while, but they have weird reactions to whatever sedative she used to nab them and lost all their memories and she doesn't have the patience to deal with that so she arranges for Jason to be looked after by the same guy she has keeping an eye on her secret grandson Leo that Zeus doesn't know about, and then Tries to get Hades to keep an eye on Percy since he's more off-grid then the other family members (and Percy tends to attract more attention than Jason), but he won't do it, so Hera's like "well fuck you. now I'm involving your secret daughter that no one knows about. yeah Nico found her and told me lmao", and sure enough within the week the press has a clear picture of Hazel escaping in a private jet with legally missing teen boys Percy Olympian-Jackson and heir to the Zhang family fortune Frank Zhang, who's mansion just mysteriously exploded.

2) when Percy is recounting his amnesia trip, Poseidon is like "I love you but you are lying about the wolves part. there is no way that happened twice in our family. please tell me you were nowhere near wolves" but Percy describes them all in great detail and where he was when they found them and Jason is like "wait that's...my wolf pack??? that's the exact pack that raised me? #mywolves" and everyone is like. WHAT.

3) Dionysus and Ares going by their fake names solely to fuck with amnesiac Percy

4) Nico was snooping through family documents and found Hazel's birth certificate, tracked her down, found out she was in foster care and snuck her out and then told Hera so she could arrange for Hazel to live at a boarding school run by the family. Hera was so thrilled to have dirt on Hades the kids hadn't even finished explaining before she got her checkbook out.

5) Frank was not originally part of the family but after the big news story about his house blowing up Ares adopted him for clout, and just kept sending him to the school he and Hazel went to

6) Leo finding out the reason he keeps getting caught by cps is because his billionaire grandmother has security guards around him at all times but she doesn't want to just take custody of him:

7) Piper realizing her amnesiac boyfriend is actually the younger brother of the man her mom keeps having affairs with:

oooh let me think okay.

like I said above it's funniest if Annabeth somehow still gets sent on a suicide quest. so Athena's having a breakdown for reasons separate from the main plot, I don't think the specifics matter right now bc it's midnight, but let's say she's mad that her daughter is moping (over her missing boyfriend mind you) and starts yelling about how Annabeth never brings any honor to her mother's name, she only gets in the news when Percy's in trouble, dumb shit like that. and she tells Annabeth to not come home until she does something noteworthy, and instead of being reasonable and 1) just moving in with her dad or 2) starting a charity like rich people do when they want good press, Annabeth's like well fine I'm gonna do the hardest possible thing I can imagine and track down a statue of the goddess you're named after that's famously been missing for centuries. fuck you. then your name will FOREVER be associated with me bitch.

So she takes Piper, Jason and Leo with her- Jason is a big history buff, he's a good help with research, Leo is good at squeezing into weird and tight places, Piper has a lot of travel connections through her dad and is definitely able to flirt her way into getting access to dig sites. They PLAN to also take Nico, cause he's a little freak and is good at sneaking around, but when they get to the school in California they find out not only that he's been kidnapped by his evil great grandmother, but PERCY IS THERE!!

Percy's memories don't come back as fast as they did in SoN, but he does remember Annabeth so he's like immediately on board with this stupid rogue archeology trip. Hazel decides to come along bc they already had reason to believe Evil Great Grandma is in the Mediterranean, and she's hoping they can try and track down Nico while they're there. Frank tags along bc his fucking house just exploded and he has nothing better to do quite honestly.

Many, many hijinks later they get info that Gaea has an extensive collection of stolen ancient art and she Knows they're looking for the Athena Parthenos and she offers Nico's freedom in exchange for the location they think it's buried. Percy is like "bet" and then just lies about the fucking location after they get Nico back so she's on like the other side of the country once they get to the parking lot in Rome that Annabeth has narrowed down as the most likely spot. Piper manages to get some permits and Leo's on the excavator while the others just have shovels and are sifting through rubble.

They DO find the statue, obviously- but since they're also a bunch of teenagers that have no idea what they're doing, all the digging triggers a huge fucking sink hole. Percy and Annabeth fall in and everyone assumes they're dead.

Meanwhile Percy and Annabeth are having like, "journey to the center of the earth" bullshit happening to them, and after about a month manage to make it back to the surface, grab a phone from the first kind samaritan they find and call in to CNN or BBC World or whatever and are like "hey yeah we're alive. listen there's a huge fucking super volcano underneath most of Italy from what we could tell, and it really doesn't seem like it's gonna be dormant forever. heads up? yeah we entered in Rome and we're now in fuckign Sicily somehow??? huge underground and underwater volcanic network guys and it seemed pretty Awake"

and then, because they just gave away their location on live international TV, they are PROMPTLY kidnapped by Gaea's people and taken to Greece.

Meanwhile, their friends and family are all on a plane to Athens to honor their memory while officially restoring the Athena Parthenos to her rightful place. They're in the air while Percy and Annabeth are calling into the news, so they completely still think they're dead until they get to the Parthenon and find those bitches Tied To A Ritualistic Altar.

Huge brawl between the assorted Olympian family (and extended friends) and Gaea and her henchmen. Half the Parthenon gets destroyed. International scandal.

Forgive how messy this is, I did it in one sitting after freaking out with my friends how gorgeous the dolls were

I’m totally obsessed with the new mirror mi dolls!!