Note: This blog is not about Harry Potter. Sorry! I just had a lot of Percy Jackson feels to write about!
So here’s the thing.
Everyone in the Heroes of Olympus fandom loves Percy Jackson. I mean, he’s damn near close to being a
perfect character. I’d argue that most
of Riordan’s characters are damn near perfect.
For some reason, the internet likes to slam the rest of the heroes of
Olympus. So I’m writing this in defense
of them. Because I think each and every
one of them is super important and relevant.
Annabeth Chase
I feel like I don’t have to defend Annabeth because she’s
pretty much universally loved (except when it comes to Perachel shippers), but I
will anyway because I freaking love Annabeth. She’s
intelligent, methodical, and a total badass with a knife. Percy and Annabeth are my OTP, but even if
they weren’t a couple, I would still love Annabeth. She’s a fighter in more than just the literal
sense of the word. She suffers emotional
traumas and she deals with them magnificently.
What I love about Annabeth most is that she doesn’t just stoically power
through her issues, she powers through them realistically. She panics, she cries, she nearly falls
victim to her insecurities. She’s more
than just a badass, brilliant kid. She’s
a sixteen year old girl with legitimate sixteen year old problems. She cares about her boyfriend and she’s not
afraid to show it. Just because she’s a
badass, that doesn’t mean she can’t have feelings. But also, Annabeth doesn’t just exist in the
story to be Percy’s girlfriend. She’s a
lot more than that. She’s definitely the
leader of the quest. (Jason and Percy
obviously think so anyway because they let her have the head chair at the table
after a stupid manly man standoff). It’s
great to see a female character in that kind of leadership role when she’s
outnumbered by dudes. And she’s also
extremely kind. People trust her. Even Frank, who hardly knows her, trusts her to
help him figure out the Chinese handcuff situation. She’s someone that people can count on.
Leo Valdez
Leo gets a lot of love on the internet, but I was pretty
surprised to find that he also gets a lot of hate. The arguments for why Leo is crappy are that
he’s selfish, he’s mean to Frank, and he cares about machines more than real
people. I’m not really concerned about
the selfish thing. Teenagers are selfish. It’s in their nature. No teenager is actually as perfect as Percy
Jackson. I could go one about ALL the
heroes of Olympus’s selfish tendencies, but I won’t because they’re not interesting
to me.
As for the Frank thing, well, I’ll
admit, Leo crosses the line sometimes.
He pretty much calls Frank fat at one point and as a fellow fatty, I am
not cool with that. But the thing is
that I understand why he’s mean to Frank.
He sees Frank as competition. He
feels inadequate compared to Frank because Frank is this massive hulking guy
with a beautiful girlfriend. He doesn’t
realize how insecure Frank is.
Moving on
to the machine-loving issue. First of all, I don’t
think that he actually likes machines more than people. That’s just not true. What IS true is that he feels more
comfortable with machines than with people.
The only thing Leo has going for him is his sense of humor. He’s not attractive or strong really. So he becomes insecure and ends up taking his
humor a step too far because he doesn’t know how to interact with people. In the end of The Mark of Athena, we see that Leo cares about his friends (even
Frank) more than even the most precious machine as he gives up the Archimedes stuff
to save them. To be honest, I find Leo’s
inability to relate to people endearing because I have the same problem. Leo’s flaws, I think, are what make him such
a great character. He does stupid stuff,
but it’s realistically the same stupid stuff that we are all guilty of. Leo represents a huge number of people in our
generation because he’s been disconnected from real human relationships because
of technology. He’s extremely flawed,
but that’s why he’s extremely relevant (and in my opinion, extremely lovable).
Frank Zhang
At first, I was pretty surprised to find that Frank doesn’t
have a huge internet following like Leo or Percy does. But know I think I know why. Percy and Leo are sassy. Tumblr loves sassiness. But if we’re telling the truth, Percy and Leo
are borderline rude sometimes. You know
who’s never rude? Frank Zhang. He gets mad at Leo sometimes, but usually
only when Leo’s provoking him. Frank is
sweet and peaceful and adorably clumsy.
He feels insecure about his powers.
He’s always belittling them. And I
feel like that’s what makes him so endearing.
He’s self-deprecating. And I don’t
mean to get all, “you don’t know you’re beautiful, that’s what makes you
beautiful” on you guys, but really, Frank’s humility is a breath of Fresh air compared
to the faux bravado of Jason, Percy, and Leo.
Everyone feels like Frank sometimes.
We’re needed and important, but we don’t always know that we’re needed
and important. It’s really a shame that
he’s so neglected in the fandom because I think that’s exactly the kind of
thing Frank would be afraid of. He’d be
afraid that he wasn’t good enough for anyone.
People put too much importance on confidence and fail to find the value
in a good old slice of humble pie. Frank
deserves all the fans. Because out of
all the other male heroes in the prophecy of the seven, he’s by far the most
humble.
Piper McLean
Piper is the most underrated demigod in the prophecy
of the seven. People write her off
because she’s not a combat fighter like Hazel or Annabeth. But the thing is, I think Piper is the most
important female character in this story, because Piper’s weapon is her
voice. Piper’s skill is that she can make
herself heard. She can get people to see
her way, to listen to her. She does the
thing that all women of the real world should strive to do: stand up for
themselves and assert their authority in a male dominated world. Seriously, I cannot express how important
Piper is. She’s not much of a physical
fighter, she spends a lot of time thinking about her boyfriend, and she’s
constantly conscious of the way she looks.
THESE ARE NOT NEGATIVE QUALITIES IN A PERSON. In fact, they are completely realistic qualities
to a fifteen year old girl. This is why
Piper is important. She shows us that
you can be a hero without having to use your fists. You can be a hero without killing or
maiming. You can be girly and still be
awesome. Beauty queens can be
badasses. You don’t have to be an
Annabeth Chase or an Arya Stark or a Katniss Everdeen. If you’re a Piper– if you can get people to
listen to you, you’re still a force to be reckoned with.
Hazel Levesque
Hazel’s not my favorite, to be honest. It surprises me that Piper gets more crap than she does. It’s not that there’s
anything particularly unlikable about Hazel, but I tend to find myself weighed
down and depressed by her story. I mean,
she’s a reincarnated daughter of Pluto from the 1940s who experienced extreme
prejudice because of her race, and was cursed to create precious jewels that
kill people, which made her mother go out of business and be forced to move to
Alaska. Then her mother was possessed by
Gaia which eventually led to the death of both mother and daughter and the
awakening of Gaia which Hazel herself
feels personally responsible for. THEN
she’s brought back to life by her half-brother who always makes her feel
inadequate because really he’s just using her to replace his dead full
sister. Like, SWEET JESUS. Life doesn’t get much shittier than that,
right? So like, I think any internal
pain Hazel expresses in her chapters is completely 100% valid. I would complain until I died a second time
if I were Hazel. But like I said, I
just think that’s too much pain for one character to bear.
On the other hand, what makes Hazel a truly
great character is that she DOES manage to survive all the pain she goes
through and still have a relatively positive outlook on things. She is seriously inspirational to young girls
in bad situations and I really like that aspect of Hazel’s character. Also, she does something that I think a lot
of girls do. She internalizes a lot of
pain and wrongly accepts being at fault for the poor decisions of adults. She feels like it’s her fault that Gaia is
rising, but let’s be real, it’s her mom’s fault. Her mom is a really weird kind of verbally
abusive and Hazel deals with that with incredible strength. Anyway, Hazel carries all that pain around,
but she doesn’t complain one bit. And
that’s admirable. She undoubtedly has
the most horrific backstory of anyone, AND she complains about it less than
anyone.
Jason Grace
Poor Jason. Jason
gets crapped on a lot. Mostly because he’s
not Percy. Honestly, I’m sure no fan of
the series actually likes Jason better than Percy. But that’s mostly because we had a whole book
series dedicated to Percy before Jason even existed! We know Percy better, so obviously we’re
going to like him more. If there had
been a book series detailing Jason’s adventures side-by-side with Percy’s, then
who knows who we would love more?
Anyway, enough with the Percy talk and onto why Jason is actually
awesome. Jason’s got the stoic hero
thing going on…except not really. He’s
trying really hard to be the stoic hero because that’s who he learned to be at
Camp Jupiter, but that’s not who he really is.
He’s really a goofball– the kind of goofball who scars himself with a
stapler as a child and who can tolerate Leo and keep up with his witty banter. I think Jason’s struggle to find a balance
between his Roman and Greek characteristics is really interesting. John Green once said something about the hero’s
journey being about going from strength to weakness and I think that Jason is a
perfect example of that. Jason goes from
being the biggest big shot there is, to being the guy who keeps passing out all
the time in The Mark of Athena. Jason learns a lesson that a lot of guys his
age could stand to learn: He isn’t the
only person capable of great things. And
more importantly, your self-worth doesn’t rely on being the best. Lot’s of people are capable of great things
and sometimes you need to rely on those people.
You can’t be the hero every time.
Sometimes you need to check your ego and accept some help.
