#sort of disorganized post

[same-picture-of-a-rock-every-day]

Rock mod rock collection reveal? More likely than you think

[ceramicbeetle]

it has come to me in a vision (Lila using phone AAC app to write her essays when she goes to college)

[radmystique]

Twitter “activists” are something else, man.

[cebwrites]

nsfw headcanons (iruka)

oc x canon | taeiru, yamatae/taezo | nsfw under the cut cw: oral, brief breeding kink mention word count: 1.1k

Since his partner has a fair bit of height on him, Iruka uses that to his advantage by leaving kisses down Tae's ear and neck - sometimes it's to signal the other man know to follow him to bed, other times it's to light a fire in Tae's body they won't be able to properly indulge in until later that week

Tae likes running his fingers through Iruka's hair when they're both in such a position, undoing his ponytail to let his bangs frame his face, running his nails against the back of his shirt; Tae knows that if they get into this in the early morning that they're probably not going to get anything substantial—courtesy of Iruka's frustrating ability to completely suppress his own desires—but if they home together after a long day, when they've been eyeing each other up more than anything else, he does everything in his power to make sure Iruka can't cheekily slip out of this one

Iruka's not so bold as to do any of this even semi-publicly, unlike when Tenzo's hand drifts dangerously high up their partner's thigh under the table, but when it comes to creating tension he's got good intuition for pushing the right buttons for better results later on; though he doesn't have Tae eating out the palm of his hand Iruka very well could if he wanted to, heaven knows that man is willing, but choses to be nice

When receiving oral Iruka likes pulling on his partner's hair, Tae isn't inclined to be bothered either way since most of the time he's too lost in the sauce of pleasuring his partner but what this does do is pull out more little sighs and moans from him, which of course immediately get sent to Iruka's twitching cock

To eat his man out, Iruka prefers if Tae was sitting on his face - although there is a little cause for concern from the latter's part over the robustness of his partner's neck; when they don't go with that position, Iruka likes to fold Tae in half and watch him squirm

While the dynamic between them isn't nearly as competitive as what goes on between his partner and Captain Yamato, Iruka still enjoys seeing Tae bound and blind-folded; on occasion the two men will work together to make their partner yield and Tae gets to enjoy the night of his life being edged and spoiled afterwards, these instances are few and far between because the three of them are still working out the machinations of their relationship and things are a little awkward here and there, but they all do care for each other a lot

After everything Tae's been through, Iruka finds it hard to fault anyone who would love him as much as he does

The pace Iruka sets is intense, a lot more feverish than either of them expected, Iruka suspects it might have something to do with how long he's pined for the other man and now that he finally "has" him, these explosive feelings just come out in one way or another

If Tae put the pieces together as well he doesn't say, but he does help Iruka wind down a little—maybe even have some fun with it with the silk restraints in their bedside table—eventually do find a steady medium, but for a while Tae has to wear regular jonin blues instead of his custom fit because Iruka would sooner collapse than have anyone accidentally see the hand prints on his waist; not that the jonin in question would really mind, however

Tae isn't fussy about positions, but he does like it when he can feel Iruka's cock push his belly out from behind, especially with the warmth of his partner's hand against it; it's much the same with Tenzo - although he's well endowed enough to achieve this from most other positions too curses to medically advanced personalized bottom surgery /j

Left to his own devices, Iruka automatically defaults to missionary when they get down to it - not because he's opposed to other more "fun" positions, it's just that he finds this one to be most ideal for kissing, praising, and orally stimulating Tae's nipples until he's almost lost complete coherence - when Iruka bottoms, he jockeys his lap for much of the same effect

Like the other two in their polyamorous arrangements Iruka may or may not also have a breeding kink, only that this came up after a long, in-depth conversation about how Tae probably wouldn't be able to bear his children or give him the "normal" life most people dreamt of retiring into; the answer of which was that Iruka didn't need biological children to build a life with him, Naruto was already more than a handful and Yamato gladly (in exasperation) corroborated the academy teacher's statement

Maybe it's because he's only just getting used to fully feeling his emotions again in recent years, or maybe he really is getting soft, but Tae cries into his partners' arms that night, postponing whatever intimate plans anyone might've had but there was nary a single complaint to be had

The week after, however, once everyone had cleared the evening to themselves for once Tae made sure to repay their tenderness and understanding in full, completely indulging in the silly little kink the three of them shared with a little bit of help from a partial transformation jutsu; Tae never had trouble reigning in his expressions before, but this time even he struggled to keep the laughter in at Iruka's flustered, bug-eyed reaction and the way Tenzo's posture seemed to stiffen like one of his wood clones

Though they rarely have time for full days off, Iruka spends his visiting various onsen - once he and Tae get closer, he gets invited along and they presumably also fool around in the inn's accommodations afterwards; unfortunately Iruka also had to the learn the hard way that his partner's body and brain don't enjoy being slowly boiled over the course of an hour, and by the time they got back to their room, he was so out of it he might as well have gotten tipsy

With other cooler bodies of water, however, like lakes, and the ocean, Tae is free from overheating and they're allowed to fool around as much as they want provided no one else sees; Tae once had to teleport them back to their tent, sealed when he sensed people coming from down stream to where Iruka was hollowing him out behind the waterfall

They were thankfully never discovered, or at least no one made enough of a fuss to indicate that they were, but from then on Iruka was a bit more careful despite Tae's lax attitude about these things staying relatively the same (ie, being entirely unbothered)

[rot--mutt]

grrrrrr really wanna create a good blog for my worldbuilding and story stuff but also the desire to clean up this blog and use it for that but also wanna use this for personal stuff and have separate sideblogs for creative projects but also

[neon-danger]

What’s the oneshot?

I Don’t Know

[ms-demeanor]

Due to some stuff brought up in recent posts I believe it is time to once again extol the virtues of Ms-Demeanor's Patented Where Did I Put That Fucking Paper Organizational Binder.

Hello! I am a disorganized adult! This is the system by which I manage my important shit like pink slips for my car and medical records and tax information.

You're going to need:

A 3-Ring Binder

Transparent Sheet Protectors

Notebook dividers (optional but VERY useful)

A backpack (optional)

So the way this system works is you put the sheet protectors into the binder. You can either use the dividers to divide the binder into sections or you can label some of the sheet protectors to make different sections but what you are generally going to do is make sections of the binder labeled things like "taxes" or "vet" or "doctor" and put a few sheet protectors in each section.

Then all of your papers with important information get crammed in that folder. You don't organize them, you don't sort them by date, you don't alphabetize. You put things vaguely relating to taxes into the sheet protectors in the taxes section. You put things relating to cars in the cars section. You don't even attempt to make this readable - you're not using sheet protectors so that you can read each page and keep it legible, you're using sheet protectors because it's a cheap plastic bag that will sit nicely in a binder.

You CAN put stuff into the individual sheet protectors when you get it, but let's be realistic you probably WON'T do that, so just tuck individual papers into the front of the binder until you get to a critical mass of paperwork then take an hour to sit down and sort into categories and put it in the binder once every six months to three years (depending on how frequently you get paperwork). Sometimes these sections will outgrow their original allotted space - since my spouse had a transplant surgery the medical section has had to become its own folder - and that's okay. If you end up with multiple folders just keep them together (this is why the backpack is an option, and one I strongly recommend).

Because yeah, if my organization system relies on opening up a drawer and putting something where it belongs as soon as I get the paper, I will simply not be organized. It's not going to happen. But I can handle a messy stack of paper that sits in one place and grows until it is time to shove it into a binder. I can't organize things for thirty seconds a day every day but I can organize things for an hour once every year or so (maybe two hours every five years when I sort out stuff I don't need like copies of warranties for parts on a car I don't own anymore).

When my mom died she had about fifty pounds of paper files in her office that were neatly organized in a system that didn't make any sense to my dad, my sister, and I. I ended up sorting through those files for twenty hours, tossing out copies of paid invoices from ten years ago and student handbooks from my junior high school. I reduced one filing cabinet, two desk file drawers, and a foot-high stack to a six inch binder that I gave to my dad. My mom died five years ago; two months ago my dad asked me about a medical document and I was able to tell him to go look for it in the medical section of the binder. It was there, because ALL IMPORTANT SHIT GOES IN THE BINDER.

Where is my birth certificate? In the binder. Where is my tax return from 2017? In the binder. Where is the record of my dog's last rabies shot? In the binder. Where are the records for my life insurance? In the binder.

A lot of what people consider "being organized" breaks down to whether or not you can find the specific things that you're looking for. Does my binder look nice? Is it aesthetic? Does it have color-coded tabs and papers all laid out neatly? Absolutely fucking not. But if you ask me where to find a paper I know that I can do so within about five minutes of shuffling through the pile of letter-folded sheets that I pulled out of the appropriate section of the binder.

I've discussed the Where Did I Put that Fucking Paper Binder before, but now it is time to expand that concept to the Backpack of Important Shit.

You likely have Important Shit that does not fit in a binder. Some of my Important Shit that does not fit in a binder is stuff like jewelry and the spare key for my car. Other stuff - the reason I decided to bring this up at all - includes my backup hard drive and packaging (including product key codes) for pretty much all of the software that I own. This is also where I store printed out copies of the recovery codes for most of the online accounts that I have.

There's a lot of weird fiddly shit that we have to have that we might not access all that often. This is the kind of stuff that might end up in junk drawers or under sinks or in disused laptop bags or kicking around under a bunch of papers in a desk drawer.

It doesn't matter so much when that weird fiddly shit is a set of hex keys or a utility knife or a protractor or a copy of a student handbook but it DOES matter when it's something that you might need to put your hands on in a hurry. If your computer crashes, you're not going to want to track down the software in the back of a filing cabinet and the backup drive from somewhere in the bowels of your desk. If you lock your keys in your car you are not going to want to figure out if your spare is in a junk drawer or the old purse where you keep semi-important stuff or the tin on your desk that has buttons and pins and headphone covers. Just put it in the Backpack of Important Shit and when you need it you know where to look.

So anyway, if you are a person who is a minor disaster who has trouble finding important things when you need them please don't think that you have to get your life together and have a nice organized filing cabinet or clear plastic bins full of documents or a neatly divided storage closet where everything from board games to backup drives has its own neatly labeled place. Just assign ONE LOCATION for important shit and start putting the important shit there. It doesn't matter if you have a filing cabinet where you keep old copies of homework and printouts of online orders and family history records - you do not need to keep everything that is file-able in one place and depending on what level of catastrophe you are it might be detrimental to you if you try to do that. It doesn't matter if you have a jewelry box where you keep your collection of gauges and wrist cuffs; if you are going to stress out about where grandma's ring is when you're digging through your collection of cheap earrings and silver pendants then *do not keep grandma's ring or any other Important, Vital, Cannot Be Lost jewelry in with your day-to-day wear*.

I live someplace that has fires. My binder got upgraded to my Backpack of Important Shit when the fires were getting uncomfortably close to the house I was living in and I wanted to have one bag to grab if we had to get out fast. Once I did that, I never took the binder out of the backpack and the backpack has now made three moves with me and has meant that I've had my birth certificate handy when I needed it in the middle of a move between two states, I was able to provide a history of my cholesterol panel going back six years to a visiting nurse, and I was able to give the exact names and contact info of my spouse's previous surgeon to the hospital when I had unexpectedly moved to a new state with three bags and my work computer at the beginning of the pandemic.

Get yourself a backpack of important shit and a folder of where the fuck did i put that paper. It is so much easier to search a backpack for important shit than to go through an entire house and it is so much easier to flip through a binder than it is to dig through a filing cabinet.

Anyway good luck and happy adulting.

[mint-mumbles]

PLEASE stop using “dbd”, “dbd memes”, “dbd fanart”, or anything of the sort for Dead Boy Detectives because it’s still taken up a large part of the dbd tag, which has historically been used for Dead by Daylight

The dbd tag has been used for Dead By Daylight for 8 YEARS without issue until the Dead Boy Detectives SHOW came along in late April

It is now mid August and despite the Dead by Daylight fandom’s constant asking of the fans to stop using the dbd tag, I still see it as frequently as Dead by Daylight posts

Dead by Daylight fans had to spend their 8th Anniversary SWAMPED with Dead Boy Detectives posts in the tag, making it hard to find their own posts

Please, I am BEGGING YOU, please stop 😭

The amount of passive aggressiveness I’ve seen from certain fans of DBDA when people ask them to stop using the dbd tag is just insane.

“You want me to retag all my posts?” JUST STOP USING THE DBD TAG, PLEASE! YOU CAN RETAG IF YOU WANT, BUT AT THE VERY LEAST STOP TAGGING IT AS DBD IN THE FUTURE 😭

“You don’t own the tags” I didn’t say we do. I’m saying that the tag that hasn’t had any problems in the last DECADE and had only started having issues AFTER THE DBDA SHOW CAME OUT. It is a DIRECT result of the show. Please stop playing ignorant by misconstruing my words

Do you want to know where the source of the dbd tag becoming mixed with Dead by Daylight and Dead Boy Detectives came from? It was NETFLIX. Due to their marketing, they put their ads in the dbd tag, which (again) has been historically used by the Dead by Daylight fandom. It’s Netflix’s fault that this confusing and disorganized mess is happening

I have a lot of DBDA people blocked because I want to scroll the dbd tag without seeing DBDA posts (despite me having the Dead Boy Detectives tag blocked, I still see the “you have this tag blocked” notification), so if you could reblog this or give this situation more attention, I would be super grateful 🙏

[brawltogethernow]

I would LOVE to hear your aro Hal thoughts if you don’t mind sharing?

[re:] (Sorry in advance there are absolutely no issue citations; I have saved so many pages in random places without labeling them.)

I don't know if I'd even call it having thoughts so much as having...an incomplete collection of Hal...saying things?

And having things said about him?

And he does this very familiar weasel jink when asked certain types of questions.

Like the general direction of authorial intent here is presumably that he's a ~playboy~ who ~can't be tied down~,

but we rarely see him...like...with anybody. He's an informed attribute playboy who's had a handful of onscreen flings that tend to be complete disasters with significantly less chemistry than a poorly measured baking soda volcano, and other than that there's Carol, who he's been failing to marry with high agitation for sixty-five years at this point. Like in cape comics it's standard for your obvious endgame A couple to take twenty or thirty years to get around to that, but sixty is excessive. Like even Alicia Masters and the Thing managed it faster and they kept getting put off because it stressed out too many Marvel writers to contemplate monsterfucking. (And other less comedic factors but this post isn't about that.)

And every time Hal tries to go steady with Carol he acts like he's dying, even though he clearly loves her and holds having her in his life in extremely high priority.

Like he is not enjoying a playboy lifestyle he doesn't want to give up. He has tried very hard to settle down several times, but he always panics and bolts at the last second like someone who's run out of the willpower¹ to keep holding onto an electrified rod--except when he's rescued by deus ex machina.

¹Ha.

And it's also pretty evident that he hates himself for this and doesn't understand why he can't pass this standard life milestone, or why he keeps hurting Carol, his favorite person, trying and failing to do what they think you're supposed to. He very blatantly views his romantic failures as something that let down other people and "improving" as a sacrifice he's supposed to make for them.

When his desires come into it it's primarily in the context of him gaslighting himself about how he totally wants the things he's supposed to that won't disappoint people, definitely definitely for real this time.

As seen above, romantic success for Hal is often conflated with retiring from being Green Lantern to inject cheap drama and insert a built-in inevitable failure, framing him as staying single because he's "married to the job". This barely ever made sense but was already downright comedic by the, I want to say late 70's?, where Carol was in on the secret identity and John and Katma were pulling off extremely successful GL/GL dating in the same book. At this point it's complete nonsense, so writers have been pulling harder on framing Hal as a disorganized man-child with commitment issues who's just sort of arbitrarily rendered undateable by being a committed superhero, something which, although it's a classic source of drama, has not hindered any of DC's other characters to this degree this consistently.

In conclusion: This aro man does not know what aromanticism is despite being one degree of separation from Connor Hawke, which is ruining his life and his ability to have any self esteem. Him and Carol desperately need someone to tell them what queerplatonic relationships are so they can stop doing these wretched I'm-not-touching-you kisses.

#EverybodyDislikedThat

Also he's been dressing up as the aromantic flag since 1959. Okay now I'm done.

[anim-ttrpgs]

The Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy October 17th Beta update has launched today on itch.io for free!

Happy Halloween! We pulled out all the stops just to get the update out in time for you to prep and play it for your group’s Halloween game! The free adventure module that comes with it, “Horror Harry’s Haunted House”, takes place on Halloween after all! In it, your investigators will solve a “murder mystery” in a charmingly spooky haunted house escape room. It serves as a sort of investigation and survival training ground for you and your PCs to learn the ropes before jumping into more Call-of-Cthulhu-esque adventures where death is around every corner. (You can even get two more adventure modules over on our patreon)

Download the new rulebook here on itch.io! Even if you download it for free, just checking it out, talking about it, reblogging this post, etc. helps us out immensely. We are a diverse, largely queer team setting out to slay a dragon, we’ve already been working on this for four years, and we need all the community support we can get!

If you’re wondering what Eureka even is, watch this trailer, or read this post if you don't wanna watch a video.

If you’ve ever tried to run a murder mystery in D&D, what you really needed was Eureka.

If you’re coming from the August beta release, which I assume you are, lemme tell you that a lot has been improved. I’ll go over some of the highlights, and post the full changelog under the cut. It’s still free, but if you could throw a bit of money out way on the itchio page, even if you’ve paid before, that would be a massive, massive help. We’re actually a bit over budget even with the relative success of the Kickstarter, plus for one of us this is their primary source of income.

Trait Overhaul

There’s a few new Traits, and nearly every single existing Trait has been redone to make them better and/or more interesting. Each Trait will now have an even more significant effect on your gameplay experience.

Combat Overhaul + World's Best Grappling Rules

Combat in Eureka is now better than ever, and it was already really good - plus, now you can actually comprehend the dang rules! The previous combat rules, I admit, were a dense and confusing slog to read through, even if they worked really well once you understood them. Now, thanks to our editor, you can understand them! Instead of being split across four chapters, it’s now just two chapters. One chapter explains weapons and is mostly just for stat reference, and the other chapter is focused on telling you everything your character can do during “dangerous situations,” which are not just combat, but really just any kind of scenario where a character can get hurt. As a special highlight to the combat overhaul, Eureka now boasts the first ever set of grappling rules that are viable, realistic, and fun to employ at the table! I’m serious when I say I have never seen them done like this before, and think they offer an actual leap forward in something that TTRPGs have struggled with since early editions of D&D! I also put a lot of my own judo and other martial arts experience to work here.

Monster Overhaul

A lot of what I said about the pre-overhaul combat sections of the rulebooks were also true of the monster PC rules. They were dense, hard to reference, and disorganized. Well not anymore! All six playable monsters in Eureka have been completely rewritten using the skills I have gained as a game designer since first writing them, and, like the regular Traits, they have all been at the very least tweaked to be more interesting and have a greater effect on gameplay, and some have been changed entirely with all new subsystems! Witches brew potions now, fairies actually have stuff to do with the names they collect, and more! Plus, speaking of Traits, every monster can have more regular Traits now, to really help flesh out their personality!

CHANGE LOG 

Copy-editing Progress: Thoroughly copy-edited up to p. 302. Half-ass copy-edited up to p. 322.

WHOLE BOOK

Stuck most of the $42+ kickstarter backer submission info into the very back of the book just to get it out of our email inbox and to allow the whole team to be able to more easily see it and work with it. Going to be doing more to integrate this stuff into the actual rulebook soon. 

Changed the headings to hopefully be more legible. Please give us feedback on what you think of this change.

CHAPTER 1

Changed the limitations on how Comfort is used to restore investigator Composure. 

Fixed a typo in the investigation example of play. 

Made it so that Composure rolls for fears in the “Ridiculous” category don’t even always need to be rolled when these things are encountered. 

Moved Character Health and Status, Grievous Wounds, Healing, and Healing Example sections to Chapter 1. 

Changed Partial Incapacitation to give -2 modifiers instead of -1. 

Overhauled the rules for injuries, incapacitation, and grievous wounds completely. A ton of it is changed. 

Added codified rules for medical facilities and what to do in the case of investigator death. 

Added “The Creeps” optional rule. 

Tweak to When is the Party “Split” section regarding how long to go before jumping between groups.

Lots of new art has been added.

Tweaks to Be Prepared to Lose section.

—---------------------------------------------------

Additions to the What is Eureka For section

Changed comforting factors and exacerbating factors for Composure rolls to be +/-2 instead of +/-1 so they make a real difference.

New snoop

Changed the font of the section headings in the Ticking Clock section. Let us know what you think of these headings compared to the other headings, because we are considering changing all the headings to be like this.  

Better clarified some stuff about how Ticks work when an adventure starts at some random time of day.

—-------------------------------------

More art has been added

Made travel take more time and matter more

CHAPTER 2

Changed the CQC skill to Close Combat, as this is more clear and obvious what that means at a glance

Made lots of copy-editing progress. Many paragraphs are shorter and convey the rules more clearly. 

Changed the way the Burnout Trait works. It now causes the investigator to lose flat Composure each day rather than affecting their Composure rolls. 

Changed the Death Wish Trait to not suck.

Changed the Elementary! Trait to use Visual Calculus instead of Social Cues.

Changed Go With Your Gut Trait to not suck. 

Added that wallets and like basic clothing and stuff have a WP cost of 0

Added glasses to item list

Added rope to item list

Added hand warmers to item list

Changed Arithmomania trait to where it only gives a +1 base bonus to Paperwork, and the bonus for having a lower Ignorance of Quantity Tiers of Fear rating is more investigation points. 

Changed Femme Fatale to add a +1 Seduce bonus instead of +2. 

Totally redid the Hardy Trait. 

Added -1 modifier to I’m Okay You’re Okay Trait

Redid the Just Built Different Trait. Now it allows a character “no sell” an incoming Superficial Damage attack once per Scene, reducing the damage to 0, among a few other things. 

Added Renaissance Man Trait. 

Removed Love Me Trait. Might try to reword it another time, but it was too similar to too many other traits and wasn't very interesting. 

Completely reworked Lover Trait. 

Many new snoops have been added.

Changed the Mad Genius trait to be called Lovecraft Protagonist and changed what it does. 

Removed the investigation point cap on Man of Action Trait. Also changed the name to Ask Questions Later. 

Changed My Glasses Trait to only provide bonuses to Knowledge Skill Investigative Rolls. 

Changed Nightstalker Trait so that it provides a bonus to all Interpersonal Rolls while trespassing 

Changed None of My Business Trait to suck less.

Changed Not Finished Yet Trait to suck less.

Changed Showboater Trait to suck less.

Changed Skeptic Trait to suck less.

Smalls is now a real Trait instead of just a joke Trait. 

Removed the +1 Bonus from the Unpredictable Trait.

Changed Wicked Trait to not suck. 

Changed Wizened Trait to suck less. 

Woo-Woo Trait no-longer based on Blacked Out Skill. 

Moved “Deadly Combat, Permanent Consequences” here and changed the title to “Disabilities are Disabling”

Changed Basic Physical Therapy on the Wealth Point Item List from 3WP to 2WP. 

Added new section “People Change”

Made Blissfully Ignorant trait immune to “The Creeps.”

Made the Technically… Trait have a +2 bonus instead of +1.

Updated the Hard Boiled Trait to work with the new way that injuries and incapacitation works.

Moved the Hardened Hearts snoop to be the Wicked snoop instead. 

Changed “Empath” Trait to be “Empathetic” instead. 

Made “Did You Know…” a better and more usable Trait

Made Hard Under Pressure a better and more usable Trait.

Changed how the WP cost of an item affects the modifier for rolling for it in-adventure. The modifier is now half the WP cost rounded down. 

—--------------------------------------------------------

Gave a proper name to the Wealth modifier attached to certain homes and vehicles, it is now called the Property Modifier(PM).

Lowered the price of firearm ammunition by 1WP

Lowered the price of desktop computers by 1WP

Lowered the price of cameras by 1WP

Combined various hand tools into one entry on the item lists and moved them to Misc.

Made hotels something that is prepaid in WP similar to food budget. 

Made Large Apartment less expensive and Tiny Apartment more expensive

Moved Baseball Bat and Axe out of Weapons and into Misc. 

Changed how Food Budget works.

Removed Net Skill Limit mechanic entirely

Edit to the duration of the bonuses for Femme Fatale

Changed Ninja Trait to a +2 bonus instead of +1

—----------------------------------------------------------

Made “Sleep On It” Trait give 1D6-1 investigation points, and still give Composure.

Added “Real Capybara Hours.” Sometimes jokes are just for us.

Added animals to item lists

CHAPTER 3

Moved the section “Deadly Combat, Permanent Consequences” into chapter 2. 

More art has been added.

Moved Character Health and Status, Grievous Wounds, Healing, and Healing Example sections to Chapter 1. 

—------------------------------------------------

Changed the name of Chapter 3 to “Dangerous Situations.” We are planning to put all the combat and other dangerous stuff into one chapter called “Dangerous Situations” and merge combat, chases, etc. into one thing rather than splitting it up and having it in a bunch of different chapters.

Made it so that the Speed mechanic works with Theater of the Mind as well, and removed that other awkward mechanic with rolling Athletics for how many turns it takes for a character to cross a large distance. 

Complete restructure of the way the mechanics for movement and action are explained, as well as defining things as both Movements and Actions. 

Created a Chapter 2.5. In the future when we are ready to shift the chapter numbers, Chapter 2.5 will become the new Chapter 3 and the current Chapter 3 will become Chapter 4. Chapter 2.5 currently houses the statistics of weapons and other combat items. The plan is that a first-time reader will read the weapon statistics in Chapter 2.5 before they read the combat rules in Chapter 3, which will inform the way they understand Chapter 3. 

Changed damage value and special attributes of pepper spray. 

Made brass knuckles do 1 penetrative damage. 

Made stun guns do 2 superficial damage.

Made it so that bulletproof vests do protect against 1-damage weapons. 

Moved and rearranged like everything from chapters 3-6. 

Close range bonus for guns is now +2 instead of +1

Simplified Stopping Power rules (the actual way it works has not changed, we just rewrote it so that it gives the same mechanics in like a tenth of the word count)

Separated open-faced helmets and full-face helmets, and made it so that wearing a helmet along with body armor gives a -1 penalty to incoming attack rolls. 

“Single Load” is now called “Internal Magazines”

Shotguns at extremely close range now have similar stopping power to a rifle, but at 5-10 yards they still have their double stopping power. 

Changed how Rate of Fire works for guns. Just making it a number instead of distinct actions. 

Made it so that Quick Cycling affects basically all guns except automatics, meaning characters with high Firearms skill can now fire semi-automatic pistols at 3 bullets per Action.

Streamlined Stabilization. It is no-longer a roll and instead a penalty that worsens the more bullets are being fired at once. 

Made Bipods give +2 Contextual bonus instead of +1 to single stationary targets.

Changed Reactions and made them more broadly applicable and usable as a rule.

—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Overhauled Grabs, Throws, Holds, and Escapes to make them a viable option in a lot more scenarios.

Defined “On the Ground” and made it its own section.

Made knock out blows and throws ignore Armor. Knock-out blows are still somewhat penalized by helmets.

Added A Real John Woo Film Optional Rule

More art has been added

Hastily updated the random chase obstacle tables for the new Movement/Action system.

Updated the example obstacles to be more in line with how we designed obstacles for the obstacle tables. 

Redid how Poison works. We meant to make it less convoluted but accidentally made it more granular instead. We did write it better so it will at least feel less convoluted. 

CHAPTER 4

Merged this chapter with chapter 3

CHAPTER 5

merged this chapter with chapter 3

CHAPTER 6

merged this chapter with chapter 3

CHAPTER 7

Added “Psychological Warfare” mechanic. 

—--------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER 8

The Blacked Out Skill has been changed in two major ways. First we made it more obvious that the Blacked Out Skill applies even to knowledge of the supernatural that is not necessarily true. And also rather than working the way that every other Knowledge skill works, the Blacked Out Skill now gives leads to where answers might be found rather than immediate concrete answers. 

THE GORGON IS FINISHED AND FULLY PLAYABLE!

Added that Alt. Witches have to make their supernatural ability composure rolls at +0 instead of +3. The +3 was a typo.

Started work on the complete monster overhaul.

Vampires have been completely rewritten. Most of their abilities and themes are the same, but the way the abilities work has been overhauled and improved in many cases, as well as now being formatted and structured in a sane and easily-referenceable way. 

More art has been added. 

Changed the +2 Contextual Close Combat bonus for the Werewolf Trait to a +1 Base Bonus

Wolfmen have been completely rewritten. Most of their abilities and themes are the same, but the way the abilities work has been overhauled and improved in many cases, as well as now being formatted and structured in a sane and easily-referenceable way. 

Fairytale Witch is currently being rewritten/overhauled. 

Changed Incredible Strength Mage Trait to have a +2 Close Combat bonus instead of +3.

—-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Clarified that gorgon blood does not heal gorgons.

Changed the way that monsters interact with Composure and their Tiers of Fear during the act of preying on other people. Instead of just ignoring it or having a bonus (i somehow left both of those conflicting rules in and no one told me), a relevant Composure roll is still made when a monster eats someone, but they do not lose Composure points from it even in the event of Partial Success or Failure. This keeps the narrative benefit of a Composure roll to show the monster’s emotional state, but without making hunting numerically pointless.

Finished the complete fairytale witch overhaul. 

Made the Close Combat bonus for superhuman strength be just +1 for the vast majority of instances. The only exception is wolfman forms. They get a higher Close Combat bonus because their transformations actually make them bigger and taller and this helps a lot in Close Combat.

Reduced Athletics bonus of Incredible Strength trait to +2. 

Merged the Alt. Witch with Mage, and made Mage a Misc. supernatural category instead of its own separate thing. This is going to be a really messy transition for chapter 8 so please bear with us. I am making a brief run though the chapter to clean up the biggest discrepancies this change creates, but I probably won’t get them all until the editor and I have time to actually go through and copy-edit it. 

“Mage” is now its own trait, and what were previously called “mage traits” are now called “mage powers”. Mages now have between 1 and 6 mage powers as part of their mage trait, with worse composure rolls the more powers they have. 

When they engage in their True Nature, monsters now have a chance to recoup some or all of the Composure they lost as a result of using their powers to hunt prey. 

—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fully overhauled the fairy rules. Just one more monster to overhaul! Woo! 

Changed the Curse of Slumber to take effect the next time the victim falls asleep rather than knocking them out spontaneously.

Overhauled the changeling rules to go along with the overhauled fairy rules. 

Clarified something about the vampire’s In Lizard Fashion ability, they wouldnt be able to use this to stop a speeding truck.

Removed the hard limit on how many people a wolfman could eat at once, and also added rules for what happens if they shift to a smaller form with people in their stomach. Made similar tweaks for vampires. 

More art has been added 

Fully overhauled the Thing from Beyond, and that completes the full monster overhaul. All Monsters now consist of a single Trait, rather than needing a pair of Traits. 

Gave vampires’ “wearing the evening” ability a maximum distance of 50 yards and also it is a Movement now 

Made a few more adjustments to some of the monster sections to bring them up to date with the new Movement/Action mechanics. 

Adjusted all instances of poison in the monster sections to account for the new poison rules.

[llannasvsp]

MY NINJA HCS!! (How have I literally never posted these before??) Also there are not a lot because unfortunately I am not a creative soul but enjoy nonetheless.

Kai: - Bisexual - Can sing INCREDIBLY well. - Drinks black coffee. - Cartilage and lobe piercings. - Burns paper and other flammable objects as a calming method. - Pop music enjoyer (his favorite songs are 100% by Chappell Roan).

Cole: - Gay - Actually CAN cook, but the others mess with him for fun. - Wears eyeliner (moreso as a teen, but occasionally as an adult). - Has depression (lowkey this one is canon though). - "Dad" of the group.

Jay: - Bisexual - ADHD and anxiety - Is VERY good at doing makeup. - Pin and button collector.

Zane: - Asexual - Has episodes of derealization. - Actually LOVES the color pink. He wears pink pajamas and sweaters. - Knits in his free time.

Nya: - Pansexual - Literally so buff. - Anger issues. - Cannot cook to save her life. - Super disorganized. - Mom of the group (about 1/2 of the time). Lloyd: - Aroace - Panic disorder (also pretty much canon). - Trains as a method of calming himself down (also sort of canon). - Cannot cook to save his life. - He has a terrarium in his room. - "Mom" of the group (the other 1/2 of the time).

Again, this is literally so not creative, but I hope this was somewhat entertaining. Also!! Leave your own headcanons in the comments because I wanna know them all!!

[wintermoons]

I saw a post sharing the opinion that the Rookanis almost kiss scene is an act or a mask on Lucanis’ part to account for the disconnect and I wanted to give my very disorganized 2 cents without hijacking someone else’s post

(Also full disclosure I’ve played the game once and never took Neve and Lucanis anywhere together so I have no idea what they’re like)

So there obviously is a very big disconnect between the almost kiss and the rest of his romance. He’s incredibly charming, forward, and undeniably flirtatious during the almost kiss scene, but to me it doesn’t read as an act or disingenuous.

From Lucanis’ perspective he’s just woken up after Spite took over again, for the second time since he’s been to the Lighthouse. This moment marks the third time in game that Rook has a chance to react to this sort of thing with Spite — first when Spite threw a tantrum and hurt him, then again when Spite took over and tried to leave. Once again Rook shows concern for him, a noted lack of fear for themselves, and acceptance. He isn’t being shunned because of Spite. To my memory Rook doesn’t even spend much time trying to figure out how to exorcise Spite, it’s not like their acceptance and care is conditional on Spite not being there. But they also make a point to acknowledge he’s more than the possession, Spite is a part of Lucanis that needs to be worked with AND Lucanis is still more than that possession. Everyone else in his family — Caterina and Illario specifically see him largely as the possessed man at the moment. He’s even afraid Caterina won’t love him anymore because of the possession.

Also, coming out of the Ossuary I imagine Lucanis is absolutely starved for affection, intimacy and closeness that are on his terms. Any kind of physical touch he received there was likely sparing and forced on him through torture or to possess him. He was likely starved for it since the beginning but didn’t allow himself to try and get it because he saw himself as an abomination and, in his mind, who could ever want something like that?

Now, when he wakes up I imagine he’s exhausted and a little disoriented, so his usual guards are down. He even gives Rook 2 more chances to ‘come to their senses’ and realize they don’t actually want him — he says ‘you deserve better then to deal with my mess’ and ‘this isn’t a good idea’ and twice Rook shoots that down.

I think the moment of flirting is Lucanis finally allowing himself to grab with both hands for that tangible affection and intimacy he’s been craving from the person who has shown him they’re not scared of Spite and accept that part of him, despite the fact they just witnessed yet again the downsides of it. I think in that moment he’s absolutely so amazed and relieved that somehow he isn’t being rejected, he’s being freely offered what he’s been starved for, so he just goes for it full stop and absolutely pours on the charm before he remembers he can’t allow himself that and leaves. I believe it comes from a very genuine place and that is just as much him genuinely flirting as cooking for Rook is. The cooking is likely an ‘every day’ acts of service ‘small ways’ of showing his love and care type of thing but yeah I think the almost kiss was all him as well.

[shattered-system]

The “Redefinition” of Systempunk

Updated version!

We're not typically an essay kind of blog, but there's something l've been turning over in my mind since l've seen it.

I have the post pulled up now actually, and about 11 hours ago @/the-alarm-system "recoined" (stole) the term systempunk in a long post, as well as designed a flag with its own meaning and I want to sort through some of it.

I also have a few personal pet peeves about their flag design, given that it's color palette clashes and the flag is way too busy. I don't expect it to spread far given that it violates several rules of good design (saying this as someone who has been to school for graphic design.)

I will not post it here, because I don't care to spread it any more than this post already may.

Their flag slightly predates my own version of the systempunk flag, but given that theirs was created for a separate concept with a stolen name, I maintain that we were the first.

We begin with their definition of systempunk.

“A term or Subculture surrounding the liberation of plurals and the critique of psychiatry."

First issue lies here. Both the destigmitization of dissociative disorders and critique of the psych field are extremely important discussions to have!

But they are separate discussions. There is absolutely overlap, but combining the two here is kind of shooting yourself in the foot, because then the conversation in that tag will be disorganized.

Have a systempunk movement AND an anti-psych or psych-critical movement. That way people can easily find the relevant discussions and terms.

This is followed up with a bit about the harm the psychiatric field has caused (not delving into that as that's not what this blog is about) and then circle back onto "the future is plural."

This is not one of the instances where OP means it in the "the future is destigmitization" sense, as they are pro endo. (On a side note, even ignoring the endo use of the phrase-- if I need to read about a slogan to understand the meaning of the slogan, it's a bad slogan. The point of a slogan is to communicate a concept quickly.)

The flag has black and brown stripes akin to the progress flag to represent systems of color, which is the only part of the design we have no critique for, but are describing anyway just as a bit of information.

The purple stripe stands for:

“Endo solidarity... endogenic systems are continuously harmed by antis who remain uncritical of psychiatry."

Once again, we are mixing two expansive concepts into one term.

The term anti-endo doesn't imply a position one way or the other on the psychiatry discussion.

Some anti-endos swear by the DSM5, others don't. Anti-endo is a term that means anti-endo/ endo-critical. That is all it means.

There is a difference between holding the DSM as the complete authority on mental illness and saying that a trauma disorder is caused by trauma.

I'm not sure if OP knows that and is choosing to cast anti-endos in a bad light, or legitimately confused. However, OP is a syscourse blog who is on a lot of blocklists and is spammy in the tags, and has likely been blocked by anyone who isn't also out looking to pick immature fights. (This is a system who made a post in all caps calling for an endo raid on #systempunk.)

Continuing directly from the last quote:

“[Antis] are against the liberation of plurals and deny a plural future in order to push singlethood onto others."

It's possible OP is referring to final fusion, which the anti-endo community is not a monolith on either. Most people we've interacted with are supporters of functional multiplicity (including ourselves.)

Most likely however, they mean that anti-endos "push singlethood" by telling endogenics that they can't have a trauma disorder without trauma.

And I could go into a whole tirade about that, but dozens of systems have done it before and I doubt any pro-endos have gotten this far. I am writing this for the anti-endo and on-the-fence audiences.

Visit @antimisinfo's helpful masterpost for a list of legitimate sources.

OP seems to believe that by “forcing” this singlethood, we are contributing directly to the oppression of systems. Hypocritically, OP themselves are contributing directly to the oppression of trauma victims.

Endogenics are not part of the "diverse experiences of plurality” (we are diverse, but united in origin) given that they don't exist. And if they did, they would have such a fundamentally different experience than trauma-formed systems that both groups would need separate language and tags to have space to themselves.

And endos already have a well-established punk tag for themselves. It seems they won't be happy until they chase trauma victims out of every space they create for themselves and steal every term. They've already stolen even the medical terminology used for CDDs.

The yellow stripe of the flag is meant to represent those with actual CDDs. Once again, psych stuff is brought up. However, I do agree with OP that those who do not want final fusion should not be pushed into it.

The pink and white stripes of the flag are entirely dedicated to anti-psych points. I think this would do wonderfully on it's own flag. But bringing the large range of discussion the anti-psych movement encompasses and the large range of discussion the CDD community has into the same tags is going to make it monumentally difficult to find the conversations you're wanting to have, and weaken both communities considerably.

There is a line of barbed wire across the flag that is partially for the same anti-psych movement as well as in favor of protecting and defending endogenic "identities." The ampersand stands for plurality.

There are fangs on the flag as well, encouraging systems to be loud and proud about their existence. And I agree that systems should make themselves known. However, endogenic systems don't exist, and their promotion will continue to drag us down.

I have read testimonies about traumagenic (real) systems being fakeclaimed or denied treatment by healthcare experts who, through exposure to endos, came to the conclusion CDDs are fake entirely.

Real systems seeking treatment and help after a lifetime of horrific abuse are being denied care.

Not to mention the setback of social acceptance by endos.

“Force plural liberation down the throats of others. Force the future to be plural."

[ciphermitarai]

I got an ask on the mark blog pertinent to this while I was writing this post so it’s a sign I guess.

My Disorganized Thoughts On Why Mark Berskii Acts The Way He Does

I think the reason why I got so attached to Mark immediately is because I saw a lot of myself in him. Mark acts really standoffish and uncomfortable, kind of snarky in general, in a way that indicates (clearly) that not only does he not trust his classmates, but he never did. This isn’t to say I know the real reasons why he acts the way he does, but it is to say that my insights might be of some form of value to other people.

From my personal perspective, his behavior mirrors the way I acted in high school quite a bit. It’s pretty easy to forget that Mark would be a first year college student, or in his last year of high school. (I’m also eighteen.) He’s obviously impacted by the game in a realistic way—I think his vulnerabilities are evident in places. On cue grabs beanie, pulls down over face.

But as for the reason why I think he acts this way from the very beginning, or at least what of I see of myself in him… I acted that way out of anxiety. I didn’t fit in very well with my peers (whaaat? Me? Nooo way!!!) so I became standoffish. I came from a pretty closed-off town, so I kind of hardened to my peers. They didn’t welcome me, they even made fun of me, so I became sort of… pre-emptively a bit of a jerk as a way of protecting myself. That mindset gets cyclical. It gets hard to admit that other people might actually want to be let into your world, genuinely, and aren’t making fun of you in some way. I’m also fairly often characterized as being standoffish and rude without intending to, partially because of this and partially because of autism, tone issues, my face, whatever.

Which brings me to

self esteem issues

This sort of behavior is heavily exacerbated by a feeling of low self-worth. I think the reason why Mark doesn’t want anyone to comment on his work isn’t particularly mysterious, especially while it’s live! Recently, I showed an animatic I made to some family friends who were essentially obligated to receive it well, and I couldn’t even look while it was happening. If I trust someone, it’s okay for me to show my work to them. But with people I don’t know or trust, I’d rather they just not say anything at all about it, especially if I’m not showing it out of my own will. it would be impossible for me to believe that they’re telling the truth, you know? It’s actually sort of upsetting!

Showing your work to fellow classmates, which Mark might already have a negative predisposition towards if he was received in a similar way, probably provokes such a reaction.

I can’t ever say for sure why Mark feels negatively about his own work, but what I can say is that when you do become heavily invested in a creative drive, when you create things that you personally don’t like, it can be shattering. Especially when you have a lot of effort put into it! If your art is an expression of “you”, then what is this?

For someone on the world stage, the disconnect is million fold. He’s known for things that he doesn’t identify with, that he doesn’t like, for whatever reason that may be. So when people tell him positive things about it… it not only doesn’t mean anything, but it feels like an insult. I hope that one day he can create something he is proud of.

oh Also

I think mark’s alligator symbolism is really interesting. He too is lying in wait in a sense. It’s totally possible that he does some fucked up shit in the future, but I feel like it would be out of desperation, or in other words it wouldn’t have much to do with his outward personality.

It’s important to remember that, again, he’s eighteen. He has some semblance of principles—at least, I think that’s why he’s so resistant to Damon after the whole Cara thing. I don’t think he’s secretly evil, or even overly hateful. Something that shouldn’t be underestimated, yes, and someone definitely capable of rising to the level of cruelty that the killing game necessitates, but he’s clearly only snarky to people who are loud and abrasive themselves (or, I guess, exceedingly stupid).

And I think that’s why there’s appeal in jettski, platonic or romantic—jett doesn’t care about the things that mark hates about himself. That’s obvious from the beginning. And I think that those attempts to get closer to him make mark, annoyed as he is, feel like someone does actually see worth in him, or want to go out of their way to talk to him. Maybe just a little bit.

Or maybe I’m just projecting. Who knows?

[starry-907]

Animation vs Life SMP

alright so i said in the tumblr community if we got new life series and influencer arc ep 3 on the same day i'd post my (currently very minimal and disorganized) thoughts for animation vs life series! and uh. we did indeed get new life series today soooooo yeah.

thoughts below the cut cuz it will likely be a bit long shgsldjf

Explanation of life smp

so! for those of you that don't know what life series/life smp is, it's basically hardcore but you have (usually) 3 lives instead of just one (there's been 2 seasons that don't follow that exact idea). when you hit your last life (referred to as your "red life") you get to be hostile and kill others outside of specific circumstances. last person alive wins! there's been 5 seasons so far (and a vaugely canon april fools ep), with the 6th season starting today, leading to me writing this here.

a lot of folks also add in some additional lore with these beings called the watchers, with the lore being that they're the ones organizing the games and kinda keeping the players locked in this loop of death games. i think one of the content creators has his own lore involving the watchers, martyn inthelittlewood.

if you want an explanation of ava/avm i can't type that here or we'd be here all day so instead i'll just link this post i made a while back that should help explain some stuff

The foundation

essentially this au starts with the idea of what if instead of mcyt-ers, the watchers decided to nab some silly sticks for their death game instead? the current lineup that they grabbed is:

Vic, Chosen, Dark, Second, Green, Blue, Yellow, Red, Purple, and Mango. i might add the mercs if i want more people for more complexity, but i'm still in the baby stages of ideation here.

thing is though, the watchers want to have a pawn member actually in the games, so they can manipulate events the way they want to, whenever they need to. so.....

(yeah that's right i made drawings to go along with this explanation)

ok so it isn't just because they're also purple, it's because they seemed the best candidate in terms of skill and such. cunning and resourceful, but still desperate for approval in a way, so just breadcrumb some praise and you should be able to get them to do what you need them to do right?

i mean purple does eventually realize something's up and doesn't listen to the watchers as much (when they can get away with it).

purple's changes

of course, being made a watcher does come with some changes, external and internal.

external, they get these floating eyes around their head, and the watcher symbol on their back. both of them are usually not visible, only really showing up in low light (light level 3 or less) or when under extreme stress. somehow no one's really questioned it? i mean if you're stuck in a death game (that you don't know is a loop of death games), your friend suddenly getting a bunch of eyes isn't a major concern.

what does garner attention (esp cuz these can't be hidden), is the fact that purple's elytra have turned into full on feathered wings (also with the watcher symbol). they don't allow for flight in the games (unfair advantage), but they do serve as a more... permanent reminder of where purple's ultimate loyalties should lie.

(in case you can't tell, i'm working with majority morally dark watchers here. there are some that don't like the idea, but most of them are more than down for it).

ok jumping ahead a bit we're talking curses!

what's a life series without some curses and patterns, eh? i do not have many right now, but i do know what the biggest one is, i'll do that last.

mango gets a curse to always fail to protect a close ally from death at least once

vic is cursed to always have one death that was preventable

blue has sort of a reverse of mangos, she will have at least one death protecting an ally.

ok starry but what about the canary curse?

i'm glad you asked. who's the one that always runs into battle first in ava, and is therefore the one to always die first?

THAT'S RIGHT. HECK YOU *CANARIES YOUR RED*.

i realize there's other characters that could've fit but at the same time canary red just hits so much more to me. granted the watchers didn't know for sure who their canary would be during the first game, but once red died they just collectively went 👀 and hit him with the curse.

after the first game, the ends of red's bandana become stylized to look like wings, and anyone who knows how to look can see faint images of canary wings on his shoulders. only purple knows the exact reason why.

hey so are they just stuck forever or what

uhhh haven't fully thought this part through. HOWEVER! i do know the main focus characters of this au! purple is clearly one of them, since they have a connection to the watchers (kinda against their will). the other primary focus character... well a lot of folks headcanon that the winners get to remember the past game(s) as a reward for their victory, and the first winner is someone who's more than used to dealing with having an urge in the back of their mind to kill.

basically woe, platonic bugduo upon ye. dark wins the first game, learns about the watchers and stuff, and decides to work with purple on trying to break the cycle. also! for those of you who know how third life ended take that but instead it's chosen and dark. tragic siblings.

(i guess dark did wind up fulfilling their code to destroy the chosen on- *gets exploded*)

other misc things/the scenarios imagined

they would go through all the current games, i don't have many ideas for limited life though (i've only watched all of third and secret life, i need to catch up on the others)

i realized that the boogey curse session from secret life could be very interesting to deal with (blue would be the one to start with the boogey curse), i might write that one if i ever write things for this

purple realizing at the start of limited life that everyone had their memories of third life erased (except dark, they realize dark knows but maybe by that point the alliances are already made)

purple gets to go feral at least once as a treat. is it the boogey curse? red life urges? the watchers? who knows but they get to go feral

as i said, dark is able to resist the red life urges a bit better due to experience with the mission code (which is somewhat suppressed by the watchers, they don't want to let their game be ruined by something like that). also remember how scott didn't kill anyone while affected by the boogey curse in limited life yeah dark does that and it's actually the worst

red notices the wings, he knows about canaries but he doesn't know the full significance of them.

idk what associations the winners would get (i'm still thinking about the different winners at this point anyways). I think yellow would win one, maybe also chosen or second...?

unlikely alliances, unlikely alliances as far as the eye can see. double life especially

PLEASE if you have any ideas or questions come yell at me in my ask box, i would like to talk more about this and i'm curious what thoughts y'all might have

[catflowerqueen]

Yet another au idea that is funny specifically to me, and that I am posting to subject you all to my weird sense of humor:

ISAT au where when Siffrin joined the group by fighting off that Sadness, their weapon of choice was an old shovel that was so old that it ended up breaking during the fight. They end up joining the group specifically because they are seeking a replacement shovel, and have yet to find one in any of the towns that were visited on the journey (either because the towns were disorganized in the chaos, the town didn't have shovels meeting their specifications, or the ones that did were already frozen and he wasn't just going to steal someone's shovel like that when they didn't know if they were still using it, especially since they can't justify it as being for weaponry/"saving the country" purposes since that Sadness fight proved that shovels aren't really the greatest weapon, compared to when they pick up anything and everything in the House that catches their fancy)

Why was he wielding that shovel, you may ask? Because he'd been trying to dig a hole big enough to turn into an underground bunker. Not to try and hide from the King or the curse or anything--they just thought an underground bunker in the woods might be a nice place to live. A sort of permanent base without having to worry about things like property taxes. Or just decided on a whim.

When they go antiquing with Odile, they specifically are looking for shovels/digging tools (even though an antique shovel probably wouldn't hold out long enough for his specific purposes).

...They probably do come across some shovels which would work, but still come up with millions of excuses for why they aren't "good enough" because that way they continue to have a justification for staying with the group beyond the whole "we have to save the country from this curse" thing.

(Would work especially well if this was one of those universes where Siffrin is basically a hermit who lives in the woods because they just came to Vaugarde recently and don't know the local language, so has no idea that the freezing isn't just a natural phenomenon and that the group is travelling with a specific end goal and foe in mind. Maybe they were planning on digging their underground bunker in the neighboring country and had no idea they'd wandered across the border into Vaugarde because they used a path people don't usually traverse.

And/or had actually dug quite a substantial amount of the bunker already in said neighboring country and didn't realize he'd accidentally tunneled into Vaugarde when creating one of their periodic air vent shafts.)