PJO Magazine Edition #6: May 2019

Article #2: Piper's Past

Piper McLean is my favourite character from the Percy Jackson universe, right after Leo Valdez. This article will break down the main reason why I love her so much - she's a survivor. True, it's not like she's an orphan or ran from home six times, but she's had her own struggles.

She underwent years of bullying from Jane and her classmates, who mocked her for not knowing her mother and made repeated racist remarks about her family, calling her dad a drunk, and purposely mixing up Hualapai and Cherokee and asking if she was happy to be "back on the rez".

Piper wanted to be normal so badly she'd endure the torment rather than reveal the fact that her father was a movie star. And yet after all of the snide remarks from Isabel and her friends, Piper held the door open for them so they could get to safety when the venti attacked.

Next up is her father, who hardly paid her any attention no matter what drastic measures she went to. She refused to give up on surfing even though she was terrible, simply because it gave her a chance to spend time with him. A notable representation of how rarely they spent time together was how instead of playing the usual game of Twenty Questions, they had the considerably shortened Any Three Questions, "her dad's way of staying connected in the shortest possible amount of time". Shortest? Yeah, not the best thing to aim for.

The last time they played the game, it was first time they had a day together in three months. It was in these precious times when Piper felt "like she actually had a father." But they don't even finish the short three-question game, as Jane interrupts their picnic and Piper is sent to Wilderness School. During this, he accidentally calls her a problem. "You have to agree to go to a boarding school in Nevada. They specialize in problems ... in kids with tough issues."

Sure, many parents are busy. But Tristan McLean was a famous celebrity with a mansion in Malibu who could afford to spend a few hours a week with his daughter.

He did say in the end it was because he wanted Piper away from the insanity of celebrity life, as well as not let her grow up in poverty they way he had. But he went about it wrong, not realizing that a life without him was not giving her a normal life. He "cut off this conversation for years", not realizing the importance of communicating to Piper about how he felt and his intentions until he was kidnapped by Enceladus. And when you're fifteen and your only parent sends you away your whole life, you don't assume they're doing it to protect you.

Piper, despite everything she'd done so she could be with him, took the chance of losing that. She admitted to Jason and Leo that she'd been ordered to lead them to a death trap, a move that would have killed her dad if they hadn't all decided to go to Mount Diablo anyway. She even protested this, saying that they didn't have time to both save her dad and defeat Polybotes, and they should prioritize the latter.

After rescuing her father, she gives him a potion to wipe his memory, fully aware that it could throw their relationship right back to square one:

"[Tristan] gazed at her, as if translating her words from a foreign language. ' "But you're a hero. I would forget that?"

"Yes," Piper whispered. She forced an assuring tone into her voice. "Yes, you would. It'll be like-like before." '

The Lost Hero ends on a happier note. In spite of Tristan McLean's even bigger stardom due to his disappearance, Piper kept his attention for nearly a minute instead of the usual 30 seconds. Piper had been wronged many times, but she didn't hesitate to help the people responsible.

Written by ClaireValdez