How does Finn Edwards' passive ability affect the directive to discard Unique Assets?

Question

There is a specific faq item regarding Finn Edwards' passive ability as pertaining to Unique Assets, but I cannot make heads nor tails of it.

Q. What happens if Finn Edwards uses his passive ability to not discard a flipped Unique Asset when instructed?

A. After resolving the effects on the back of a Unique Asset, if the investigator was not instructed to “flip this card”, the Unique Asset is shuffled into the Unique Asset deck.

This occurs most frequently when Finn Edwards uses his passive ability to choose not to discard a Unique Asset, but it could occur in other ways. Regardless of how it occurs, the Unique Asset is shuffled into the Unique Asset deck.

First of all, my understanding of double-sided cards is that any time they are discarded, they are shuffled back into the deck (as mentioned under the Discarding section on page 5 of the Reference Guide). If this is the case, how is Finn "using" his passive ability doing anything other than what would normally happen anyway? If the answer is implying that he cannot use his passive ability to any positive result, then I would expect the answer to start by saying "Finn cannot use his passive ability to change the outcome etc."

I have read other comments suggesting that any item that is discarded is not done so technically as part of the item 'effect' so the discard doesn't fall under the power of Finn to affect it. The answer in the faq here still seems unclear to me. What is it saying?

Answer 1

According to the Reference Manual for Eldritch horror, when Discarding:

When a double-sided card is discarded, it is immediately shuffled back into its respective deck.

Nothing supersedes this rule in updated manuals or contradicts this anywhere else within the guide. For instance, under the Discarding heading in the Reference guide:

Whenever a card is discarded, it is placed in a faceup discard pile by its deck.

Double-sided cards, such as Spells or Conditions, are immediately shuffled back into their respective decks when discarded.

This still indicates that while the general rule is a separate discard pile, double-sided cards as a whole are immediately reshuffled.

For how this works with Finn's passive ability, we need to look at the specific wording of his character sheet

Effects cannot cause [Finn] to discard ...

Emph added. So this means that a game effect (e.g. an encounter causing Finn to become delayed and lose an ally) can be ignored. The natural consequences of using an item, however, cannot be ignored.

Thus, Finn's ability would prevent someone from stealing his Old Journal, but if said journal were aged and worn, he would be unable to prevent its falling apart upon reading it.

Answer 2

The ruling you have quoted, is essentially a patch for incompatible effects.

At the back of every Unique Asset, after resolving the other effects, you'll find instructions to either flip it or to discard it.

When it's a discard then there are no instructions to flip it (like "flip this card then discard it") as this would be redundant and pointless in most situations.

However when Finn's ability prevents this kind of discard, you would be left with a Unique Asset that is useless. All the effects on the backside were triggered when the card was flipped - without the instruction to flip it back you will not be able to use the card again.

To avoid such weird game state, the faq(/patch) tells you to shuffle the card back into the Unique Asset deck, even though the discard was prevented.