Personally, I'm sick of people hating on Piper and calling her a Mary Sue and hating on her. She's my absolute favourite character of the series – yes, even more than Annabeth – which is surprising since I didn't think I'd like a child of Aphrodite more than a child of Athena, since Athena would be more likely to be my mum than Aphrodite. But I think the main reason I love Piper is simply because a lot of other people hate her – I'm attracted to underdogs and while Annabeth does have some hate, she's loved by most of the fandom. Enough of my waffling – I hope you enjoy my chapter-by-chapter deconstructions :)

1. Piper is a Mary Sue

The most prevalent hate point I've seen is that Piper is a Mary Sue. Now, let's define a Mary Sue. A typical, basic Mary Sue (male counterpart, Gary Stu) is a character who is utterly flawless and if she does have flaws then they are 'faux flaws' – that is, they only exist to make the character look good (for example, Bella Swan's clumsiness only ever acts up when Edward is around to catch her). Everybody loves her and those that don't are hated by everyone and made to look horrible and they're the sort of characters you wouldn't want to like you anyway. These characters are only there to provide the Sue with 'conflict' and make her look oh so good and pure while everyone cheers and adores them. A Sue must also have 'speshul powahs' and be rich and/or famous and/or beautiful so that they can spend pages angsting about it and holding up ever so strongly under the strain of being these things. They can also have a tragic past or backstory just to add to their angst and 'strength', such as abuse or rape, but not all of them do; Bella's past was hardly tragic and she's still a Sue so it's not a requirement.

Let's tackle these features one by one. Piper does indeed have flaws. For one, her obsession with Jason (more on that later). She can also be a bit of a hypocrite, since she claims not to care about her appearance but she spends so much time and effort downplaying her looks and trying to make herself look rougher (which in itself is caring about her looks). She is also very possessive, claiming Jason as her own multiple times and getting jealous when anyone dares to even look at him the wrong way and disliking Reyna before even meeting her simply out of petty jealousy.

But these flaws make her human. Honestly, with the way Jason's appearance was described and what with Piper's Mist-induced memories, I'd be a bit worried if she was more chilled out and not worried about losing Jason. Her innate hypocrisy is something we all possess; heck, I hate it when people are mean to each other and total assholes but I can be a right bitch when I want to be and I complain about people who sit around and whine about their problems yet don't do anything to fix them, and that's often what I do when things get tough. It's human nature and while Piper's hypocritical whininess at times may turn some people off, I personally found it relatable. I don't give a damn how I look but, hypocritically, I'll still go out of my way to make myself look good sometimes. I didn't relate to her possessiveness but maybe that's just me; it did, however, add another flaw to her character.

Piper doesn't have any faux flaws as far as I can tell. Her low self-esteem and stealing to get her father's attention did stray into the realm of clichéd rebellious princess but at least Piper wasn't just doing it for the 'OMG, I am, lyke, such a rebel! Love me, everyone!' factor that many rebellious princesses have. She didn't do it to show off and to be a typical tough princess; she did it to get her father's attention and it did backfire on her. The day after she stole that BMW, her father took her to the beach for some time together and then when Jane went to tell Tristan, Piper had an 'oh, shit!' moment when she realised that her bid to get his attention had backfired horribly. She finally realised that she'd gone too far and probably succeeded in pushing her father further away and reinforcing the image of a typical, spoiled, rebellious princess in his eyes and I feel that that partially defeated the rebellious princess cliché; yes, she did have a small meltdown when her father tried to send her to the school but she didn't whine and throw a massive tantrum because she was being sent away and scream about how her father doesn't love her and the clichéd Spoiled Brat Tantrum Over Being Disciplined – she was more upset because he refused to acknowledge that Jane did everything for him and that Jane acted as more of a parent to Piper than he did. The point is that none of Piper's flaws were there to make her look good but rather to make her look human (or half-human, if you want to get technical about it).

Next, the 'everybody loves a Sue' factor. Not everybody loved Piper. Drew didn't, although I won't go into that because she was a typical, cardboard Scary Sue. Khione didn't like her, although she also didn't like Leo (especially) and the others of the Seven. Her father thought that at times she could be immature and a bit of a brat, what with her stealing things needlessly, and Jane quite obviously didn't like her. Reyna didn't like her at first either, being jealous of her relationship with Jason, but they did eventually develop a mutual respect of each other and Piper even says that she was prepared to hate Reyna but couldn't.

Now, were any of these characters hated by everyone else for daring to dislike precious Piper or made to look utterly incompetent or evil? I didn't like Drew and Piper's rivalry, since that was a typical, clichéd, catty rivalry, but Drew was hated by everyone because she was a bitch and bullied everyone, not just Piper – while she was there to make Piper look good, she was hated by everyone long before Piper arrived and she wasn't created specifically for this purpose; she was also key in reinforcing Silena's role as a hero and to help contrast between the weaker Piper who had no clue of anything and felt useless to the more confident Piper who realised that after rescuing the queen of the gods and charmspeaking Gaea herself to sleep, she could take on someone like Drew.

Khione didn't like most demigods and she wasn't exactly a ray of sunshine to begin with. We all got a bit of insight into Tristan's character and found why he kept his distance from Piper and he did have several points with her stealing stuff. Jane…I was a bit iffy about that. She seemed like the stereotypical evil secretary who gets her just desserts in the end but she was a very minor character in the grand scheme of things anyway, just like Drew. And when were we ever told that we must hate Reyna because she didn't like Piper? She was portrayed as a very strong woman, one to admire, and that put paid to my wariness before meeting her because of Piper's thoughts about her. The majority of Piper's rivals, or at least those who disagree with her, are not hated horribly or portrayed as 'teh evulz' for not bowing down to her and they were not there purely to make Piper look good. The ones we were told to dislike were evil anyway, like the giants, and even then some of them were pretty funny.

And now onto the typical Mary Sue traits of being oh so privileged and speshul and holding up prettily and daintily while whining about wanting to be normal. I think I'll tackle the normal part first: didn't most demigods in the series want to be normal? Annabeth was upset because she wasn't normal and her father and stepmum didn't like her because of this. If she'd been normal, she'd never have run away from home and could have had a good life. If Luke had been normal, he'd never have had to make the choices he did. If Thalia was normal, she'd never have been turned into a tree. If Nico was normal, he wouldn't have lost his sister and had to be removed from society because he was in danger and his mum would be alive. If Percy was normal, his mother wouldn't have had to put up with Gabe and he wouldn't have been kicked out of every school he went to. If Leo was normal, his mother would still be alive and his family wouldn't hate him. If Jason was normal, he'd have grown up with Thalia and had a big sister and a relatively normal life. See what I'm getting at? I hardly see how wanting to be normal is a Sue trait because I'm fairly certain that deep down, every demigod wants to be normal and stop being chased by monsters constantly. By that logic, they're all Sues.

Yes, Piper is privileged and rich and beautiful. Rachel is rich and privileged and her parents hardly pay attention to her but people only hated her because she dared to get in the way of Percabeth. Annabeth is beautiful but people don't hate her for that. So why hate Piper? Oh, I know: because she's a poor, tragic rich girl whose father doesn't pay attention to her and she's ever so beautiful and rich but is modest and doesn't like to draw attention to herself and she has the 'OMG Mary Sue kaleidoscope eyes!' and how does she ever hold up from the pressure of having a rich dad? Personally, I think that Piper's not wanting to draw attention to herself isn't so much about hating that she's ever so beautiful but wanting to be recognised on her own merits instead of by her looks. Plenty of beautiful people (and this is not a stereotype or a hate attack) could and do bat their eyelashes and everyone would scramble to do their bidding but Piper wants to do stuff herself and be noticed for her actions, not her looks that she can't help. I also feel that this is a lose-lose situation for poor Piper; if she took pride in her beauty and appearance, people would call her a slut and a stereotypical spoiled rich girl and 'OMG I hate her!11111' but if she does the opposite, people call her an attention seeker and hate on her for that.

And Piper has a reason for her beauty and kaleidoscope eyes. Seriously, she's a freaking child of Aphrodite, a goddess who brings all the gods to their knees and started a whole war; of course she's going to be beautiful! That's like hating on a child of Athena for being smarter than usual, or a son of Hephaestus for being stronger than usual. It's part of her and she can't change that, so why do people pick on her for something she can't help? She inherits her kaleidoscope eyes from her mum; most Mary Sues I've seen have them just because 'lyke, OMG, my eyes look, lyke, so awesum!' and because kaleidoscope eyes are pretty; we aren't given a reason. Piper, however, has a perfectly legitimate reason and I'd understand taking jabs at the eyes if Annabeth or Hazel had them, since they aren't a feature of Athena's or Pluto's.

I've also seen hate for Piper because she has a beautiful singing voice, just like every other Mary Sue out there, and she has a sooper speshul weapon and has both beauty and brawn. Well, for one, how does being a good singer make you a Mary Sue? By that logic, all those singers like Pink, Taylor Swift and Katy Perry are Mary Sues because they can sing beautifully. And kind ofI think that Piper's beautiful voice tied in with her charmspeak – you sort of get the impression that charmspeak wouldn't be nearly as effective with an ugly voice.

And as for her weapon, you can claim that Piper is a Sue for having a sooper speshul weapon that shows her the future if you like. But then by that logic, you'd have to call Percy and Jason Gary Stus for having speshul unique weapons (and Percy's has a tragic past to boot; hmm, maybe his sword is a Gary Stu) and Leo a Stu for having a speshul unique tool belt and Annabeth a Sue for having a speshul unique hat. If you want to hate on Piper for having a unique weapon then you have to apply that logic to the other characters too.

Claims that Piper is a Sue because she's beautiful and can fight make me mad. That is just like automatically discriminating against a whole cabin of kids just because their mother is the goddess of love. I got the impression that it wasn't that they couldn't fight, they just chose not to because they didn't want to get their hair and clothes dirty and messy. Silena chose to defy this stereotype and lead the Ares cabin into battle, even if she couldn't use a weapon properly, and Piper didn't even learn how to use her weapon properly until around about MoA. If she had immediately picked up sword fighting or only taken a few days or months to become an absolute master (like a certain male character I know) then maybe I'd agree but not only did it take months for her to even begin to learn how to properly use her knife, she still isn't even the strongest or most experienced fighter on the team. Percy, Jason, Annabeth – they're far more experienced than her and better than her but do people hate on them for that? People only hate on Piper because she's beautiful and has all these talents that others have too but if anything, that's just as shallow as some people accuse her to be because they're not looking beyond her beauty and are only seeing her as a pretty face.

And now I must concede something to the haters. Yes, Piper does whine a bit and Annabeth did have a tougher life and held up far better. However, along with adding another flaw to Piper, I think people must remember that these two girls have had different lives. Annabeth has been alone her whole life and ran away at seven years old, only to have the closest thing to a sister be turned into a tree (I'm not counting Luke at this time, since she only learned he was evil after he tried to kill Percy and Piper does have experience in betrayal later on so it's not exclusive to Annabeth). Piper, no matter how independent she is, was still raised in a life of privilege and luxury and wasn't used to living rough like Annabeth was. Piper didn't run away at age seven and she hasn't had to survive on the streets and watch her best friend turn into a tree. So, I ask, how is it realistic for Piper and Annabeth to react exactly the same way to their oh so tough lives?

Annabeth was used to having to bottle up her feelings and suck it up; Piper, while different from a typical spoilt rich kid, is still essentially one (minus spoilt) and is not used to dealing with things such as her dad being kidnapped and having to choose between her friends or her father. Annabeth has known that she was a demigod since age seven and we were never shown her reaction to learning that (we did see a flashback but she wasn't explicitly told she was a demigod); Piper went from dating Jason to finding out that this was a lie and that her mum was a goddess and she had to digest all of this, along with going on a quest practically the next day from when she arrived at camp. I'm not excusing Piper's whining; I'm merely providing reasons. Piper and Annabeth are different characters and to expect them to react the same is unrealistic and if that happened, Piper would have been called a knock-off Annabeth.

And also, the fact that she keeps her whining to herself and doesn't voice it is a point in her favour because otherwise she would look like a brat; if we're going to hate on her for whining internally then I suppose we're all Sueish brats because I whinge to myself on a daily basis but that doesn't mean I'm going to go and complain to everyone else and draw attention to myself and make myself look like a spoilt child. She didn't want to burden her friends with her troubles, thus highlighting her love and respect of her friends, and yes, it would have been better for her to tell them so that they could better prepare and it could have turned out a disaster because of this but doesn't that count as a flaw and therefore undermine the 'Piper is a Mary Sue' argument? Bella Swan may have whined internally and told her friends jack just like Piper but the thing that makes her different (and unlikeable if you don't like her) is that she does nothing about it, while Piper hated being helpless and was determined to do something and stop Gaea.

In conclusion to this point, Piper did stray close to Suedom but she was not a Mary Sue; she did have flaws and legitimate, likeable (in Reyna and Tristan's case) characters that didn't like her or weren't enamoured with her and she wasn't another sooper speshul, 'how do I ever hold up?' rich Mary Sue. I just hope that if you don't agree with me, you can express this to me nicely and not rant and rave about how much you hate Piper. Tune in next time for point number two!

~ Puffy