The whole thing between dirk&hal and also karkat&karkat where "one guy bites the bullet and talks in red" is sort of begging to be read as "talks like a black guy," right? I'm too tired right now to think about the further implications of that. Interesting though that it's a major point of realization for hal's identity but with karkat it's something he only does begrudgingly and temporarily.
Also page 4562
…I’m still leaning more towards reading “bite the bullet and talk in red” as a suicidal motif, since it Karkat disparagingly refers to the text color as a matyrdom. I guess that summons the image of the Sufferer in his chains? But the conversation seems unconcerned with blackness outside of that image (though there is a copy of Thresh Prince sitting in the background).
I guess since Troll Will Smith first shows up in the tildeath handbook (beneath a picture of the reaper), and both he and Karkat weilds a sickle, and Lord English (who arrived in the scene prior) is Snoop Dogg, the log might be positioning blackness as death, for the purposes of the conversation…? But I’m not really getting anything coherent out of that substitution in this case either
Karkat’s suggestion though, that when there are multiple copies of the same dude hanging around the polite thing to do is kill yourself, I’d say that haunts Dirk later.
we’ve both agonised a little bit over whether red and green might be black and white, or the other way around. I sat on it for a little while, but only ran into the same logical walls that obstacled my own previous attempt at colour-oriented interpretation of Homestuck; while red and green generally do come associated with black and white respectively, there are enough exceptions that they start to add up. (Grimbark Jade and Crockertier Jane are black/green and red/white, to name a prominent example)
at the time, though, we were talking a bit about the flipping of racial dynamics, i.e. how the scratch from Beforus to Alternia makes the oppressors into the oppressed and vice versa. which made me wonder if the fact that red and green don’t strictly line up to black and white all the time could be part of the point: that red/green are roles worn on top of black/white? like how the red-blooded Caliborn, whose breaking of chains you describe as black liberation imagery, starts instead advertising himself as the lime guy when he ascends to the role of imperial overlord; he hasn’t necessarily become a white guy, he’s just dressing that way now.
anyway, I recall you’ve also touched upon how robot uprising fiction has its own racial overtones. so to this point, it does seem congruous that Dirk’s robot copy of himself (which later evolves into a full-fledged Terminator) would also be painted in the colour of the inferior and the oppressed?