It’s also fun that he’s telling the kindergarten line to the character who has the very most pretension of being a Real Adult.
_
And I enjoy imagining that Kindergartener Tony was also super done with buffoonery. “Teacher, I am neither a duck nor a goose. Do you think this frivolity should amuse us? I can almost read; teach us to file taxes.”
It’s spelled with a k because it’s from russian. Obtaining kompromat was a whole industry in the USSR, and still is in today’s russia. Also in typical soviet fashion, it’s a portmanteau of komprometiruyushchiy material, or compromising material as a not-too-difficult translation.
Traditionally, kompromat is created rather than obtained. You engineer situations so as to put people into compromising situations and record them there instead of just hoping to find preexisting dirt on them.
It’s what Putin has on Agent Krasnov, AKA the tiny-fingered, ferret-wearing, cheeto-faced shitgibbon.
Mild Lee Interested
In this political climate it is vitally important not to use inflammatory, exaggerated language to describe persons such as he. In the interests of accuracy, therefore, may I suggest that rather than a shitgibbon, he is in fact a cockwomble.
Makkabee
Hey! You leave gibbons out of this! They don’t deserve that kind of guilt by association!
Technically not a portmanteau: mashing together the first couple of syllables of each word is the common way of doing abbreviations in Russian (as opposed to taking the first letter of each word, as you would do in English,)
The English way is used for abbreviations of terms that contain several words.
Me! I have! Like 99% wise! But only because I went through 2 pregnancies and was focused on that and then my depression hit… let’s say now I get ECT… So if you want to take your focus off politics for awhile, my secret is chronic severe depression with a dash of 30+ years of prime aged PTSD. Add a side dish of wonderful child rearing and voila! You’re staying clear of Cheetos!
My most worrisome hypothesis is that Tony will take Sarah’s side but in a way that Sarah wouldn’t want to, e.g. arguing that of course people who do pot should be arrested not even just expelled by the admin, let alone just voluntarily removed by a parent.
Did you ever play Ghost Busters the Video Game? I got really into Ghost Busters at one point during my childhood and played it. The gameplay is pretty fun, but what really makes it special is the fact that the whole orginal cast comes back to voice the characters and a few even helped with the scripts. It is continously hillarious and sometimes legitamitly scary (at least is was for kid me). Dan Aykroyd described as basically a third movie.
I played a Ghostbusters video game as a kid, I played it a lot and I thought it was brilliant, but I spent the first half of your comment wondering which one you meant. There’s the one you meant and also a one from 1984 on the Atari, and I got a hint since that one definitely didn’t have voice acting! It was the only game I remember on my grandfather’s Atari that had early strategy and progression systems, since it was half ghost busting and half business SIM.
Olofa
Also on the Commodore 64. Or C=64 as we used to say on the ol’ BBSes.
Lumino
Hey, the Commodore 64 one had voice acting!
They would shout “Ghostbuster!” on the title screen.
Astariel
God, all you folks who played Ghostbusters as a kid are making me feel old. I played it in my late 20s. Great game.
unfortunately for Raidah it seems Tony’s not interested in taking the bait… At this point worst case scenario is that Tony will ask Sarah her side of the story and probably agree with her reasoning.
All Sarah has to say is something like this:
“She put on a brave face around her friends, but behind closed doors she was spiraling into depression and substance abuse. I had to call her dad to get her the help she needed.”
Don’t mention anything about how she herself was being affected, which is what Raidah latched onto as “the real reason”.
I think at this point Dana herself could visit IU, hug Sarah directly in front of Raidah, and directly thank Sarah for being the only one of her friends who cared enough about her to intervene, and still Raidah wouldn’t believe it.
But Sarah’s own misanthropy means she’ll probably do what she’s done before and cast it more as protecting herself and less as caring about Dana – because she’s not comfortable being seen as caring about others.
From what information we have, that is unlikely to happen. According to Raidah (who I acknowledge is not the most unbiased source of information), Dana wishes it had not happened and still resents Sarah. But that could just be bullshit.
thejeff
Specifically she’s not in a better place “not according to Dana, last I checked” as of the first week or so of last semester. https://www.dumbingofage.com/comic/absolve/
So, sometime probably before the start of the comic, Dana wasn’t happy about it. It’s been a long time since then. And I don’t think Raidah’s said anything about being in touch with Dana or how she’s doing since then.
Honestly, there’s no reason to hold back that part. Quite frankly, unless you specifically value Dana’s presence at IU over Sarah’s well-being (as Raidah does), *either* reason alone (to get Dana the help she needs, or for the sake of Sarah’s scholarship) is plenty of justifiable reason for narcing, let alone both.
I really want to know what Raidah thinks will happen here, does she think he’ll just take her word for it and not ask Sarah for her side of the story?
At which point Sarah will mention Dana using weed as a coping mechanism, which regardless of your feelings on weed is a pretty big piece of context to leave out
most likely sow seeds. Given my earlier post I said Tony might question her for her side of the story and if Sarah’s not careful her own nature could bite her in the ass and she could get hostile at the questioning and torpedo her own relationship especially given her own self-destructive tendencies
If Tony knew the whole story I feel like he would still take Sarah’s side? I get a “trusts authority” vibe from him, I suspect he would consider the calling someone’s parents the correct response here.
ProfNekko
it’s true that Tony is more likely to take Sarah’s side after hearing her side of the story but the thing I was thinking was due to her personal issues that the act of Tony even asking for her side could cause her to get set off and turn hostile instead of rationally explaining herself.
possibly – i think it depends on how he brings it up, and the extent to which he clearly came into this already tired of Raidah suggests the way he frames it might not be too bad.
maybe even something like “I thought you should know Raidah is trying to spread malicious rumors about you” [in case she doesn’t know, which he doesn’t know] and then maybe bring up asking what’s the real story behind whatever she’s distorting.
Raidah: “Sarah lied about her roommate.”
Tony: “Sarah, did you lie about your roommate?”
Sarah: “No. Raidah didn’t trust me about the problem, but it was really bad.”
Tony: “That checks out. I figured she was just trying to manipulate me anyway.”
I’m sure somebody can make things more dramatic than that if the plot calls for it, but I don’t see why it would have to be either.
Raidah: “Sarah lied about her roommate.”
Tony: “Sarah, did you lie about your roommate?”
Sarah: “You’ve been talking to Raidah, haven’t you! She’s turned you against me, I hate her so much, she’s poisoned you with her evil just like everyone else, hiss snarl get away from me”
Tony: “Oh! …Oh. Okay.” :(
…
…
Sarah: “…shit.”
zee
Probably less “oh…okay :(“, more “okay I see this is a sensitive topic for you and raidah seems to have a history of targeting you like this. I’ll give you a moment to collect yourself but I would sincerely like to hear your side of the story. I hope you’d trust me to know better than to take raidah fully at her word. I’ll be here to listen when you’re ready.”
Or something like that, he just seems like a mature and rational communicator
So, no, it doesn’t have to be dramatic like that, and Raidah could’ve had better ammo than the Dana story, and not further cemented Tony’s poor opinion of her.
_
But this method may get Tony to push Sarah’s rage button later, and it would fit nicely with Jennifer’s statement that they should just let Sarah implode the relationship herself.
Gambling on Sarah not being able to hold a reasonable conversation about her talking to Toy and her bringing this up. She probably expects Sarah to default to ‘screeee’ mode if she plumps Tony with enough triggers.
Hell, Tony could also ask his father for what happened. Sure, technically, it’s not Tony’s biz and the father shouldn’t tell him. But I’ve seen several families with people in various admin roles. They absolutely do tell stories about what goes on behind the scenes.
I’m not sure what his father would even know. That Dana withdrew from school. Probably that her mother died.
He certainly wouldn’t know about Sarah’s role or about the drug use, since that wasn’t reported. Probably not about the depression either. At least not in any detail.
Raidah is not good at seeing things from other people’s perspectives. It doesn’t seem to ever have occurred to her that anyone who hears the Dana story could possibly feel differently about it than she does, and it’s the same with her expectations of Tony.
Same shit different day for Raidah. I think it’s a shame that she honestly hasn’t done any introspection that maybe, just maybe, Sarah was right that Dana was not doing well after her mom’s death. I know, I know, disclaimer here in case Dana’s dad is a bad guy but UNTIL we get that information in the comic itself, I’m not 100% on it.
People get suspicious of anything that seems too good to be true.
Also, he’s not fully entrenched in the core cast. Ruth probably isn’t going to do something so irredeemable that she gets effectively written out of the comic despite her volatility, that’s not the case for more ancilliary characters like Tony.
He might just get moved to peripheral cast status, similar to Lucy and Jacob. Even arguably Danny. Where they show up enough to remind you of existence but you could go half a year without seeing them in a strip and not really notice that much.
Plus, he’s literally a nepo baby who plays Headbrick for a living, so our expectations for his character, ethics, and intelligence were starting underneath the foundation. Him not being a shithead is a complete inversion of the “captain of the football team” trope, so the inversion is very fun, but also begs the question of when another shoe is gonna drop.
Context. Raidah and Incellerator actually deserve this response. The problem is, this is how he responds to *everything*. Warrantless searches of students’ dorm rooms, I don’t remember his exact quote but it strongly suggested he was an ‘if you’ve got nothing to hide you’ve got nothing to worry about’ person. Sarah wants to skip one damn class it’s “no, attendance is vital, I will escort you to make sure you attend”. Heck, she’s commented that she feels like she has to play a better version of herself for him and use a better vocabulary. He’s at a like a 57 out of 10 clenched, and not getting sucked into Raidah’s amateurish attempts to be Machiavellian only requires like a 4 out of 10.
He was at least peeved that they did the search without a warrant. He hoped they found what they were looking for mostly because he didn’t know whatever it was, seems reasonable he assumed must had been something dangerous for the whole thing to be remotely justifiable.
Shade
True we need to remember while the audience and main group know what it was about the average person on campus doesn’t actually know what they were looking for.
Seems Tony is both “letter” and “spirit” of the law. A non-proselytizing paladin, of sorts. I wonder if Sarah has already told Tony about the roommate incident from last year.
Good rule for life that I have found, the more someone dodges an honest question, the more likely they’re trying to pull a fast one on you. (Learned that from telemarketers. They ask if [my name] is speaking, I ask “who is this” and if they refuse to even tell me who they are, they get hung up on.)
194 thoughts on “Kompromat”
Elf grrl
Predictions so far are correct. Tony is a real one.
Leorale
It’s also fun that he’s telling the kindergarten line to the character who has the very most pretension of being a Real Adult.
_
And I enjoy imagining that Kindergartener Tony was also super done with buffoonery. “Teacher, I am neither a duck nor a goose. Do you think this frivolity should amuse us? I can almost read; teach us to file taxes.”
Nono
Kompromat is information used for blackmail or manipulation, in case anyone wanted to know without Googling.
Quinn
I googled it. Gonna try adding it to my vocabulary.
someone
It’s spelled with a k because it’s from russian. Obtaining kompromat was a whole industry in the USSR, and still is in today’s russia. Also in typical soviet fashion, it’s a portmanteau of komprometiruyushchiy material, or compromising material as a not-too-difficult translation.
Traditionally, kompromat is created rather than obtained. You engineer situations so as to put people into compromising situations and record them there instead of just hoping to find preexisting dirt on them.
Shade
Yeah, definitely immediately knew it was Russian.
Victor Mortimer
It’s what Putin has on Agent Krasnov, AKA the tiny-fingered, ferret-wearing, cheeto-faced shitgibbon.
Mild Lee Interested
In this political climate it is vitally important not to use inflammatory, exaggerated language to describe persons such as he. In the interests of accuracy, therefore, may I suggest that rather than a shitgibbon, he is in fact a cockwomble.
Makkabee
Hey! You leave gibbons out of this! They don’t deserve that kind of guilt by association!
Emil
Technically not a portmanteau: mashing together the first couple of syllables of each word is the common way of doing abbreviations in Russian (as opposed to taking the first letter of each word, as you would do in English,)
The English way is used for abbreviations of terms that contain several words.
eh, whatever
…anyone who has been blissfully unaware of the last ten years of American politics.
RheaRheaRhea
Me! I have! Like 99% wise! But only because I went through 2 pregnancies and was focused on that and then my depression hit… let’s say now I get ECT… So if you want to take your focus off politics for awhile, my secret is chronic severe depression with a dash of 30+ years of prime aged PTSD. Add a side dish of wonderful child rearing and voila! You’re staying clear of Cheetos!
Astariel
Really liking Tony here. No one is buying your bullshit, Raidah!
aelfwine
My most worrisome hypothesis is that Tony will take Sarah’s side but in a way that Sarah wouldn’t want to, e.g. arguing that of course people who do pot should be arrested not even just expelled by the admin, let alone just voluntarily removed by a parent.
Bryy
Leading Raidah to tell Sarah this, in an attempt to break them up. A totally cunning supervillain plan!
NGPZ
Tony ain’t have no time for any of yo pretend ass supervillian clout chasin crap Raidah XD
Cholma
Nice Ghostbusters ref, Alt text!
TrueSurvivor
Did you ever play Ghost Busters the Video Game? I got really into Ghost Busters at one point during my childhood and played it. The gameplay is pretty fun, but what really makes it special is the fact that the whole orginal cast comes back to voice the characters and a few even helped with the scripts. It is continously hillarious and sometimes legitamitly scary (at least is was for kid me). Dan Aykroyd described as basically a third movie.
Cholma
Nope. Missed that. But for some reason you reminded me of the old Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom arcade game I used to play.
Groove
I played a Ghostbusters video game as a kid, I played it a lot and I thought it was brilliant, but I spent the first half of your comment wondering which one you meant. There’s the one you meant and also a one from 1984 on the Atari, and I got a hint since that one definitely didn’t have voice acting! It was the only game I remember on my grandfather’s Atari that had early strategy and progression systems, since it was half ghost busting and half business SIM.
Olofa
Also on the Commodore 64. Or C=64 as we used to say on the ol’ BBSes.
Lumino
Hey, the Commodore 64 one had voice acting!
They would shout “Ghostbuster!” on the title screen.
Astariel
God, all you folks who played Ghostbusters as a kid are making me feel old. I played it in my late 20s. Great game.
Nono
There’s also a difference between “kicked out of school” and “parent withdrew their kid from school”.
Shade
Yeah, this angle wasn’t going to work on Tony the second the drugs come into it anyways.
profnekko
unfortunately for Raidah it seems Tony’s not interested in taking the bait… At this point worst case scenario is that Tony will ask Sarah her side of the story and probably agree with her reasoning.
Needfuldoer
All Sarah has to say is something like this:
“She put on a brave face around her friends, but behind closed doors she was spiraling into depression and substance abuse. I had to call her dad to get her the help she needed.”
Don’t mention anything about how she herself was being affected, which is what Raidah latched onto as “the real reason”.
I think at this point Dana herself could visit IU, hug Sarah directly in front of Raidah, and directly thank Sarah for being the only one of her friends who cared enough about her to intervene, and still Raidah wouldn’t believe it.
thejeff
But Sarah’s own misanthropy means she’ll probably do what she’s done before and cast it more as protecting herself and less as caring about Dana – because she’s not comfortable being seen as caring about others.
Ike
From what information we have, that is unlikely to happen. According to Raidah (who I acknowledge is not the most unbiased source of information), Dana wishes it had not happened and still resents Sarah. But that could just be bullshit.
thejeff
Specifically she’s not in a better place “not according to Dana, last I checked” as of the first week or so of last semester.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/comic/absolve/
So, sometime probably before the start of the comic, Dana wasn’t happy about it. It’s been a long time since then. And I don’t think Raidah’s said anything about being in touch with Dana or how she’s doing since then.
Tan
Honestly, there’s no reason to hold back that part. Quite frankly, unless you specifically value Dana’s presence at IU over Sarah’s well-being (as Raidah does), *either* reason alone (to get Dana the help she needs, or for the sake of Sarah’s scholarship) is plenty of justifiable reason for narcing, let alone both.
keithcurtis
You go, Tony!
Alongcameaspider
I really want to know what Raidah thinks will happen here, does she think he’ll just take her word for it and not ask Sarah for her side of the story?
At which point Sarah will mention Dana using weed as a coping mechanism, which regardless of your feelings on weed is a pretty big piece of context to leave out
ProfNekko
most likely sow seeds. Given my earlier post I said Tony might question her for her side of the story and if Sarah’s not careful her own nature could bite her in the ass and she could get hostile at the questioning and torpedo her own relationship especially given her own self-destructive tendencies
noisy
If Tony knew the whole story I feel like he would still take Sarah’s side? I get a “trusts authority” vibe from him, I suspect he would consider the calling someone’s parents the correct response here.
ProfNekko
it’s true that Tony is more likely to take Sarah’s side after hearing her side of the story but the thing I was thinking was due to her personal issues that the act of Tony even asking for her side could cause her to get set off and turn hostile instead of rationally explaining herself.
Random832
possibly – i think it depends on how he brings it up, and the extent to which he clearly came into this already tired of Raidah suggests the way he frames it might not be too bad.
maybe even something like “I thought you should know Raidah is trying to spread malicious rumors about you” [in case she doesn’t know, which he doesn’t know] and then maybe bring up asking what’s the real story behind whatever she’s distorting.
3oranges
Raidah: “Sarah lied about her roommate.”
Tony: “Sarah, did you lie about your roommate?”
Sarah: “No. Raidah didn’t trust me about the problem, but it was really bad.”
Tony: “That checks out. I figured she was just trying to manipulate me anyway.”
I’m sure somebody can make things more dramatic than that if the plot calls for it, but I don’t see why it would have to be either.
Leorale
Raidah: “Sarah lied about her roommate.”
Tony: “Sarah, did you lie about your roommate?”
Sarah: “You’ve been talking to Raidah, haven’t you! She’s turned you against me, I hate her so much, she’s poisoned you with her evil just like everyone else, hiss snarl get away from me”
Tony: “Oh! …Oh. Okay.” :(
…
…
Sarah: “…shit.”
zee
Probably less “oh…okay :(“, more “okay I see this is a sensitive topic for you and raidah seems to have a history of targeting you like this. I’ll give you a moment to collect yourself but I would sincerely like to hear your side of the story. I hope you’d trust me to know better than to take raidah fully at her word. I’ll be here to listen when you’re ready.”
Or something like that, he just seems like a mature and rational communicator
Leorale
So, no, it doesn’t have to be dramatic like that, and Raidah could’ve had better ammo than the Dana story, and not further cemented Tony’s poor opinion of her.
_
But this method may get Tony to push Sarah’s rage button later, and it would fit nicely with Jennifer’s statement that they should just let Sarah implode the relationship herself.
Bryy
Raidah operates on the worldview that she is Iago from Shakespeare.
Rowen Morland
Gambling on Sarah not being able to hold a reasonable conversation about her talking to Toy and her bringing this up. She probably expects Sarah to default to ‘screeee’ mode if she plumps Tony with enough triggers.
Steamweed
Hell, Tony could also ask his father for what happened. Sure, technically, it’s not Tony’s biz and the father shouldn’t tell him. But I’ve seen several families with people in various admin roles. They absolutely do tell stories about what goes on behind the scenes.
thejeff
I’m not sure what his father would even know. That Dana withdrew from school. Probably that her mother died.
He certainly wouldn’t know about Sarah’s role or about the drug use, since that wasn’t reported. Probably not about the depression either. At least not in any detail.
Astariel
Raidah is not good at seeing things from other people’s perspectives. It doesn’t seem to ever have occurred to her that anyone who hears the Dana story could possibly feel differently about it than she does, and it’s the same with her expectations of Tony.
Doopyboop
Same shit different day for Raidah. I think it’s a shame that she honestly hasn’t done any introspection that maybe, just maybe, Sarah was right that Dana was not doing well after her mom’s death. I know, I know, disclaimer here in case Dana’s dad is a bad guy but UNTIL we get that information in the comic itself, I’m not 100% on it.
JD
I LOVE YOU TONY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IN GENERAL BUT ALSO MVP FOR SHUTTING DOWN THIS OBVIOUS PLAY AGAINST SARAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jay
I love Tony so much I really don’t see why people doubt this man
Thag Simmons
People get suspicious of anything that seems too good to be true.
Also, he’s not fully entrenched in the core cast. Ruth probably isn’t going to do something so irredeemable that she gets effectively written out of the comic despite her volatility, that’s not the case for more ancilliary characters like Tony.
Nono
He might just get moved to peripheral cast status, similar to Lucy and Jacob. Even arguably Danny. Where they show up enough to remind you of existence but you could go half a year without seeing them in a strip and not really notice that much.
Throwatron
Plus, he’s literally a nepo baby who plays Headbrick for a living, so our expectations for his character, ethics, and intelligence were starting underneath the foundation. Him not being a shithead is a complete inversion of the “captain of the football team” trope, so the inversion is very fun, but also begs the question of when another shoe is gonna drop.
Lee
Context. Raidah and Incellerator actually deserve this response. The problem is, this is how he responds to *everything*. Warrantless searches of students’ dorm rooms, I don’t remember his exact quote but it strongly suggested he was an ‘if you’ve got nothing to hide you’ve got nothing to worry about’ person. Sarah wants to skip one damn class it’s “no, attendance is vital, I will escort you to make sure you attend”. Heck, she’s commented that she feels like she has to play a better version of herself for him and use a better vocabulary. He’s at a like a 57 out of 10 clenched, and not getting sucked into Raidah’s amateurish attempts to be Machiavellian only requires like a 4 out of 10.
nadamás
He was at least peeved that they did the search without a warrant. He hoped they found what they were looking for mostly because he didn’t know whatever it was, seems reasonable he assumed must had been something dangerous for the whole thing to be remotely justifiable.
Shade
True we need to remember while the audience and main group know what it was about the average person on campus doesn’t actually know what they were looking for.
Steamweed
Seems Tony is both “letter” and “spirit” of the law. A non-proselytizing paladin, of sorts. I wonder if Sarah has already told Tony about the roommate incident from last year.
tif
I’m guessing Sarah already told Tony about the Dana thing.
moon
what do we think hes drinking
tony doesnt seem like a soda guy to me
maybe a smoothie
Thag Simmons
Gatorade
moon
makes sense
moon
of course willis has the final verdict on how tony feels about high fructose corn syrup
Mollyscribbles
hmmm . . . pickle juice? Electrolytes without the sugar.
zee
Coconut water. Same reasoning
Throwatron
dollars to donuts its gonna be protein, with a side of extra protein
NGPZ
i say it just plain ass water XD
Bill Erak
Tony: “It smell like bullshit in here, Raidah, and I don’t see any bulls.”
I think he’s gaining on me, but we’ll have to see, anyone who dislikes Raidah is immediately more likable after all.
RassilonTDavros
I learned a new word today!
Maveric1984
Nice Ghostbusters reference in the alt-text
Grimey
“What’d your friend really do?”
Notice Raidah refuses to answer and just skips right past it.
Tequila Mockingbird
Good rule for life that I have found, the more someone dodges an honest question, the more likely they’re trying to pull a fast one on you. (Learned that from telemarketers. They ask if [my name] is speaking, I ask “who is this” and if they refuse to even tell me who they are, they get hung up on.)
Steamweed