Piper McLean is one of the main protagonists of The Heroes of Olympus by Rick Riordan, and a supporting protagonist in The Trials of Apollo. She is the demigod daughter of the goddess Aphrodite and a mortal man named Tristan McLean.
What Makes Her A Base Breaking Character?[]
What Do People Love About Her?[]
- Children of Aphrodite got little focus in the Percy Jackson series, so some fans were happy that The Heroes of Olympus had a main character from a fairly unexplored part of the setting.
- The scene where she took Drew's place as senior counselor was seen as satisfying.
- Over the course of The House of Hades, she becomes much more competent, with this being the main thing that shifted fan opinion of her in a more positive direction:
- She defeats Khione by using her charmspeak to wake up Festus and catch her captors off-guard. She also stabs Khione through the chest while delivering the line considered awesome: "Still underestimating me. You really need to work on that."
- She fights off monsters in the Necromantium.
- She took swordfighting lessons with Hazel to improve her skills.
- In The Blood of Olympus, she has more badass moments:
- She impressively fought Mimas head-on even when Annabeth's plan fell apart. She was able to slay the giant herself showing guile on Annabeth's level even though Annabeth herself struggled to do so.
- She used her charmspeak to make Gaea too tired to fight, playing a pivotal role in defeating the series' big bad.
- When The Trials of Apollo revealed that she's bisexual, some fans were glad to see more LGBT+ representation, though Nico was previously confirmed to be homosexual.
What Do People Dislike About Her?[]
- Especially in The Lost Hero, she is often cited as an example of the archetypal "not like the other girls" female protagonist that was incredibly common in 2010s YA fiction. She is a quasi-tomboyish girl who hates stereotypically feminine things like fashion, which many fans found to be generic, annoying, and overused.
- Some readers found Piper's narration style to be whiny and her obsession with Jason to be annoying.
- Before The House of Hades, she didn't have that many badass moments and (ironically given her "not like the other girls" characterization) seemed more like a damsel in distress to fans. This made her a stark contrast to the fan-beloved Annabeth.
- Her growth in competence in The House of Hades, despite giving her enough fans to not be a Scrappy, appeared to some readers to be unrealistic and borderline Mary Sueish. She went from weak to strong in an incredibly short span of in-universe time (around a year) despite having very little training. Furthermore, other characters (like Annabeth) had competence downplayed to let Piper shine.
- Those who already disliked Piper were alienated even more by how she took down Gaea with charmspeak, since they felt she was hogging the spotlight and that the battle was anticlimactic.
- A number of fans felt that her breakup with Jason in The Trials of Apollo made her unsympathetic. Piper claimed that Hera and Aphrodite forced her and Jason together with fake memories, but that isn't even shown to be the case in The Heroes of Olympus.
- When The Trials of Apollo revealed that she's bisexual, some fans felt that the representation was shoehorned in.
External Links[]
- Piper McLean on the Riordan Wiki
- Piper McLean on the Heroes Wiki