#heck for all we know there's a possibility TSATS!Will should logically be cabin counselor rather than Lee based on seniority

[aroaceleovaldez]

Speaking of their depiction of Will's anxiety- the Stymphalian birds were specifically chosen for him, because in the myths they can only be taken down by archery. But they're saying here that Will had a traumatic experience at the hands of monsters who have historically been defeated by archers. And then he didn't dedicate himself to archery at all? For the 5+ years he's been at camp? Reverse superhero origin story where instead of vowing to fight crime as the result of a loved one's death they just never leave the house ever again

Yeah! Or music/sound (which his satyr is specifically noted to be skilled at - Woodrow teaches the music class at CHB in The Hidden Oracle), which Will also doesn't do anything with besides his sonic whistle or healing hymns (which apparently are actually just his mom's songs and not hymns) at all until that gets retconned in TSATS. Like, we know he has a sonic whistle and healing hymns, but it's kind of a specific thing that he's not as musically or archery inclined as his siblings. So why half-retcon half of that, make these birds that can specifically only be defeated by sound and archery a major part of his backstory, and then... we never get any payoff for it? He faces them again, but it doesn't go any better than it did the first time? There's no building of his character there.

Also, Stymphalian birds are actually sacred to Artemis. Yknow. Apollo's twin.

I get that TSATS was trying to cameo a lot of monsters we've seen before, but making Stymphalian birds specifically part of Will's backstory feels kind of weird and doesn't make a ton of sense? Because when we see them in SoM it's implied they were specifically sent to CHB, so why would they try to maim the random kid? Especially a son of the sibling of the goddess they're sacred to?

The only explanation I would accept is that the Stymphalian birds that attacked Will in New York were actually the ones from CHB in Sea of Monsters after they flew away, and Will just got really unlucky. But timeline-wise that actually doesn't work, cause SoM and TTC are the same year, and Nico and Will are the same age, so Will should be 10 or 11 in SoM/TTC (depending on if you accept Nico is 13 or 14 in HoO). And TSATS tells us Will arrived to CHB at age eight, which would mean he's been at CHB longer than Percy has and so the birds couldn't be the same ones from SoM. (Yes I'm still mad about the absolutely broken timeline there.) Also if they're dissuaded by noise, there's no way they're going to land in the middle of New York City of all places.

There's just other monsters they could have picked that would have made more sense. Or even mortal animals! We know from previous books that there's a thing about mortal animals sometimes having vendettas against the children of gods associated with their species for curse reasons or etc! Apollo actually has a lot of those! And it can become enough of a problem even to young demigods that it can require them to come to camp early before monsters can begin tracking them (ex.: Annabeth with spiders - monsters seemed to only become a problem after she tried coming back home the first time). Why not have it be Will being attacked consistently by normal mortal crows, because he's a son of Apollo? Or snakes - in the first book Percy even mentions fighting off two snakes when he was a baby because they were sent to kill him. I mean, Will's from Texas! We can absolutely scrounge up some snakes for him to fight. And it would fit more with acknowledging how he's from Texas specifically, just like how much the book tries to emphasize that Nico is from Venice.

It feels like one of many dropped plot points that make me say I wish TSATS had been worked on longer so that these types of things could have been ironed out and maybe turned into something consistent.