Board Thread:The Heroes of Olympus/@comment-31061080-20170116021657/@comment-26402117-20170116222646

I have no clue why someone would despise her.

For one, she is a kinda well-written character. Her Cherokee background is explored strongly but not delved into at depth. Her relationship with her dad is an nice mix of love and slight resentment that fits well with the rest of the backstory. She's flawed and it doesn't read badly. The whole Aphrodite thing is what's corny, but its impossible to get away from that.

All of the seven have serious difficulty trying to prove themselves at camp. Piper rose to the challenge well and became the head counselor. The charmspeak ability is not unlike the ability to control fate. In physical combat, it isn't like a magical weapon or a combat ability - "useful". It just literally bypasses that. Controlling someone's will is a lot more straightforward than battering them into submission.

I suspect Piper's fatal flaw isn't being a romantic airhead (that one's kinda a 50-50) but being possessive. That's probably why she attempted to get attention from her father by shoplifting and is so attached to Jason. That's also probably why she was distraught at learning her memories with Jason were fake. And Piper was kinda right to suspect Reyna, who made moves on Jason at the Roman camp.

So Piper is something different, not something worse.