Ok, believe it or not this actually made things worse. see attached images.
i ran what you said and im not sure if the first command even went through since x-term didn't give me anything (see image).

So i WinSCP'd and created the directory /home/opt/usr/share/themes and rebooted. but before i even got to reboot, when i was creating the 2nd screenshot here, look at what happened. now i cant even go into "themes" at all (not in settings nor by tapping and clicking the gears icon) and a lot of buttons/images are missing or out of shape, etc.

any clue? i'd prefer not to reflash, maybe it just needs proper deleting of the symlink and somehow getting it to see the stock "themes" folder...