#im taking a higher biology this coming year so maybe i'll have a better answer after that

[aknosde]

i’ve asked this before to other people but im curious about your answer; if the god’s blood is golden and human’s is red shouldn’t demigods have a combination of those colors?

*take this as seriously as u want lol*

Y’know, when you first sent this months ago I wrote out a really in-depth response where I went into biology and the like, and then I came back to work on it and it disappeared. That haunts me to this day because I just let this sit, but I finally have energy to go ham on this again so here we go. 

I think to look at this you really have to look at the gods. Many, many people have written posts about parentage and genetics, and if I find my favorite I’ll link it here, but the two schools of thought that most people work under are A) that gods have no DNA or B) that gods become people when they do the do. Both of which would have interesting impacts, but primarily I dismiss A because that would mean all children are essentially clones of their parents, which we know is not the case. (however if you did subscribe to that, it would mean that all campers that aren’t the same gender as their mortal parent would be trans which is really cool)

So, B) gods become people with DNA. So, the nitty gritty, do gods change their appearance when they “”become“” human? We know they can from actual mythology. I suspect that they have preferences, and those are what demigods/mortals can see, so Zeus dresses and looks like a snotty white businessman on purpose for some reason. Okay neat. God sees some mortal they want to get with, god makes themself a “”human“” body and screws around with genetics until it’s what they want. And these genetics get passed down to their offspring. Evidence being that Percy is told he looks like a photocopy of Poseidon (i don’t subscribe to Poseidon or Percy being white, btw, but evidence still applies) 

But they’re still godly, still divine. And this is where we reach another barrier, because what is inside of them? When Percy fights Ares, he bleeds gold. But Ares wasn’t on Earth or in mock human form with the purpose of making babies, he was there to beat the shit out of a twelve year old. There’s no answer. Unless I turn this boat around and talk about where the greek gods get their power because that would impact their health. Percy is more powerful in water and Clarisse receives the blessing of Ares while fighting a war, so let’s take that and say that Gods receive power from whatever they are the god of, and the health of those things. Another example being Poseidon all worn out while the oceans are so messed up in TLO. A god in their element has some more juice. 

And this is why, in a really roundabout way, I think that the red vs. gold blood would fluctuate. Overall, I would say that demigod blood is red 97% of the time, non mixed. Given that gods would have some mortal blood in their “”mortal“” bodies and the mortal blood of mortal parents. Gold blood would come into play during serious bleeding (like if we don’t treat this you’ll die bleeding) and if/when demigods are in their element and powerful. For instance, children of the big three might have more gold blood, or have gold blood more often (not that anyone can tell if they aren’t actively bleeding). Versus Annabeth, who does not have any powers or magical energy bestowed on her, probably only has gold blood when she’s bleeding out. The large amount of red blood and it’s frequency would explain why demigods who don’t know of their parentage yet would not be able to see anything wrong, and the Mist could cover the small amount of gold that a mortal might see if a demigod were ever to get inured and bleeding gold.