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are you? are you? are you?

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merry christmas from the voice of the opportunist

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"You're on a path in the woods. At the end of that path is a cabin. In the basement of that cabin is a monster."

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slay the princess fanart for @killl-ka my beloved mutual !!!!! i hope this is good and not too lore inaccurate ;; I dont know anything about this game but im a sucker for this type of hand/arm motif so when I saw it i wanted to use it ^^

look at them big ol' eyes! and that pretty face! how could she possibly be a monster! (< she doesn't know)

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heres the thing i think the shifting mound and long quiet are soulmates in that they were literally torn from the same cloth and woven of the same threads but also that's stupid and there's a billion ways TLQ can hurt her or permanently end their relationship. a billion contradictory and shining facets to a relationship in which they embody. they are soulmates but also they made each other their soulmates. he looks at her and sees a princess he unknowingly made with his own hands. she carves all the ways out of the construct she can think of, and they all include the totality of both of them, fully awakened to godhood and Together. there is no ending with Just her. they both care too much for the other for that to happen. for them to love each other, the Shifting Mound has to put his faith in him, and he has to respond in kind. endings such as Your New World only prove that, while they are Meant to be Together, meant to be the Wild and the Princess and the Dragon and unwound and wound back to together and Ouroboros and meant to be Whole only as the both of them, the long quiet can develop hatred for her. which only means that they MUST love each other on purpose.

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I love soulmates but also this-

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i know that “EW” is the actual acronym used for “extinct in the wild” but it’s really funny to imagine that this thumbnail is shaming this poor tiger

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try running out now you piece of shit

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I love when characters lie. you can learn so much about them even when they're not telling you. dissecting the lie is more fun than taking anything they might say at face value. figuring out their motivations... what they're trying to achieve... are they guilty? do they regret it? did they lie gleefully?

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people hate it when women command them and force them to kneel and make them stab themselves with knives and break their wills over a divine altar and cause the end of the world. well i think we should let women do this

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they match each other’s freak to a degree that is dangerous to the public

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you have a peculiar way of showing devotion

please do not repost!

no blood alts :] also some of the proncess:

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people are calling my blade made of moonlight that exists only as an illusion bullshit. they say "how can it ignore my shield, as if it wasn't there" and i tell them that it is a blade of illusions. then they ask me "how can a blade of illusions cut through my flesh, that which is surely more real" and i explain that the role of a blade is to cut flesh, and my weapon is most certainly a blade

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Mistletoe ❤️

Merry Christmas! 👸❤️🐦‍⬛

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Pro revenge ideation, pro bitterness, envy positivity, if violence didn’t resolve your issues you were still too soft, go lower than them if not possible start digging, parasociality is holy, win the mind war you didn’t make up, failure pride, deprecation is dignity, pro archaic coping mechanism, bite while you can.

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Perhaps I'll take some screenshots of Oppo dialogue and flesh my thoughts out on this further later, but for now, get unedited paragraphs of my voice of the opportunist thoughts instead anyways, to me, Opportunist seems like someone who gets genuine joy out of Scheming, and Being Manipulative, even though he demonstrably is pretty bad at it. he's a reflection of a player who enjoys the act of betrayal, or taking advantage of situations-the kind of person like me who saw a funny like [Slay the Princess] prompt unexpected and went "well well well. let's see where this goes." It's an aspect he shares with the Cold-an interest in the Direction of events, and preferably them going Up because of his schemes, moreso than anything else. And, like Cold and Cheated, he is one of the more blatantly meta-voices that reflect a state of mind for a player rather than protagonist or person-I want to see what happens if I do [x], I want to try and "win" the visual novel. He sucks up to authority because, like other manipulative characters who I love and who are a lot better at being manipulative little shits, he's trying to integrate himself with those in-charge just so he can use them, or replace them. This is most obvious in Princess and the Dragon-one moment, he's eagerly talking about killing two birds with one stone, and even as he happily proclaims that you're back and he's not cut out for decision making so you should totally do it instead...he'll stab you and the princess IMMEDIATELY if you find yourself back in her body. Which is part of why I fucking love Princess and the Dragon! When the Opportunist is blatantly attempting to grab power nobody even has, he's a clown, nonthreatening. When he actually has it, and his companions are largely uninterested in stopping him...he recognizes that once you're in the body, you're in control, but that doesn't mean he won't try and prevent you from returning to it as to keep the power he has. Why fixate on power, then? On being at the metaphorical top? It's in part because, like all the voices, it's something of a survival mechanism-we died last time, we won't die if we [x]. We won't die if we actually succeed in outmaneuvering her this time, we won't die if we have more power than she can meaningfully resist. It doesn't work out for Oppy, in part because he generally believes he has more control than he actually does-his attempts at manipulating the situations he's in to His favor are so blatantly obvious and self-serving that it's completely ineffective.

And therein lies the rub with the Opportunist-he genuinely believes himself to be Good at what he does. He genuinely believes he Deserves to be at this Metaphorical Top where he rules everything and nobody can hurt him by tearing him apart with teeth and claws and such anymore. He genuinely believes that none of the people Actually at the top got there through virtues such as hard work, or their intelligence, or strength, but because life is full of shortcuts and they knew it, saw those shortcuts, and took them-and he admires that! His dialogue in Wraith and Princess and the Dragon sell that last point home to me-with the Wraith, he's in love with her drive, her ambition, and her willingness to do whatever it takes moreso than anything else about her, and will gladly submit himself to her since he's fully aware there's no winning. As Wraith says, this is only until he can stab her in the back again-she knows the kind of person he, and by extension, we as a player, are. In Princess and the Dragon, he outright states that everybody worth Something (<- including himself!) doesn't bother with "hard work" so much as the shortcuts! "work smarter, not harder" <- a phrase i so wish he said at some point because it fits him so well. He's also contrasted with the Narrator-the Narrator frequently has dialogue deriding the monarchy, of how seamstresses contribute more value than princesses, praising "Viva la revolucion!" with "that's the spirit!" and just generally reflecting overall leftist political beliefs.

Meanwhile Opportunist is giving lines straight from Linked-In-travelling makes him relatable, he wants a job, he can help with the management, a more capitalist, growth-mindset way of viewing a world that does not even Have politics by virtue of being Two People. And this ties back into the Shortcuts, Being at the Top, and truly, genuinely believing that's where he needs to be, and that he belongs there-the mindset of people who view themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires soon to hit the upper class if they just network well enough instead of taking a realistic look at their situation or the bigger picture. The Elon Musks of the world who did not earn their wealth, but reap the rewards again and again. That's the kind of man Opportunist wants to be-the kind who found their way into the upper eschalons of society without having to be anything remarkable at all. He thinks there's a top to get to, in this world that is just the fragmented pieces of You and Her. Meanwhile, there isn't even a constant, or a center.

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