To start I just want to say that I really enjoy not only Truth but your fics in general.
There’s two characters in your pjo fics that get mentioned periodically, Robyn and Robin. I was wondering if you have any ideas on how the Manhattan survivors reacted to having a sibling with basically the same name as a sister who died in the war, and if you’ve ever thought about expanding onn that?
Coming in with the fun questions here, anon!
To start with, I'll just address/confirm the timeline with these two, so you (and anyone else reading this) can see when and which characters are involved in this.
So Robyn joins camp two years before Percy, and dies during the Battle of Manhattan. Robin (and his twin, Merida) arrive at camp the summer after TOA. I have allocated specific years to the PJO universe to keep my sanity when dealing with timelines, so to be more specific:
June 2004: Robyn arrives at camp
June 2012: Robin (and Merida) arrive at camp
Now, as the Apollo cabin gets rather decimated during the Battle of Manhattan, with only five survivors in my timeline (Will, Alice, Sam, Austin and Kayla), there aren't that many Apollo kids to be affected by this. That being said, all five of these kids are still at camp when Robin (and Merida) arrive!
For reference, Robyn and Robin look like this:
Not identical by any means - both are white kids with blond hair but that's about where the similarities end. Robyn is also American (specifially from Florida), while Robin is Scottish, so there's a marked difference in their accents.
Personality-wise, Robyn is also a lot more outgoing and boisterous than Robin, although Robin isn't a shy boy. Of course, another similarity between both of them is...
They're both part of a double-act. Robin, as already mentioned, has a twin in Merida, and the pair of them are pretty inseparable. Robyn, whilst being no closer related to him than she is another other Apollo kid, gels particularly well with Nathan when he arrives at camp, and generally isn't seen without him, either (until Nathan gets eaten by hellhounds on Williamsburg Bridge... but then she gets killed the next night so in the long run there's not much difference, is there?)
So, getting back to the five kids who actually meet both Rob[y/i]ns, and their reactions... I may do an actual ficlet about this at some point, especially if there's interest, but as some flavour:
Will - I write Will as someone who is bad at processing grief. He tends to lock it and everyone associated with it away in a neat little box in his brain (until it all explodes out), which is not healthy in the slightest. He doesn't do too well with a reminder being shoved in his face in terms of a new sibling with the same name, but he's also an old pro at shoving grief down where he can ignore it to the best of his ability, especially when he has Something To Be Done. In this case, that's being the head counsellor and therefore a good big brother to his new siblings regardless of how much his insides are churning at freshly-remembered and unprocessed grief.
Alice - Alice is almost the opposite to Will in terms of processing grief. She likes to remember the dead, keeps photographs of them where she can see them when she's at her mother's (Will has taken down all photographs of dead siblings in the cabin and Alice is always a little resentful of this fact - the photographs get rediscovered and replaced after Will leaves camp and she becomes head counsellor), and has therefore processed and come to terms with Robyn's death. That's not to say that she's unaffected by the fact that Robin has the same name, but she's able to keep it separate enough that it's not a big issue. She does still miss her big sister a lot, though!
Sam - Sam only knew Robyn for two summers, and neither of them were full summers because he arrived late in the summer of BOTL, and then Robyn of course dies near the end of the summer of TLO, and both were only summer campers in the first place, so he's not as close with her as Will and Alice had the chance to be. He's also more of a pragmatic and level-headed sort in general and is more inclined to not dwell on the past/things he can't change. He can't change that Robyn's dead, but he can certainly make sure he doesn't make Robin feel awkward about sharing a name with a dead sister he never knew.
Austin - Austin knew Robyn for even less time than Sam, arriving at camp between BOTL and TLO and therefore only interacting with Robyn for her last summer. She wasn't the older sibling he particularly latched onto, but they are both avid musicians so he spent a lot of time with her practising and performing. Robin, meanwhile, is less of a musician, so Austin has less in common with him and generally doesn't spend much time with Robin overall. I wouldn't say it's an avoidance due to the name similarities/reminded grief, though, more the natural drifting of two people in a large group who have more in common with others than each other.
Kayla - the big grief for Kayla after Manhattan was absolutely Michael, of course, and after that was probably Nathan, again due to their mutual interest and aptitude for archery. Robyn didn't really feature on her radar overall because she didn't spend much time in the infirmary, and really did follow Michael around like a duckling for most of her first summer. She was aware of her, but didn't have much emotional attachment, certainly compared to her attachment to Michael. She's therefore probably the least affected by the name-twinning, as her memories of Robyn aren't as strong, and the three years between Robyn's death and Robin's arrival are enough for her to keep them fully separate in her mind without much, if any, overlapping grief.
Thanks for the question, anon! I'm always happy to chat about my ocs, or look at angst potential in and around CHB... Or both!
