I had two options: the first was a proper implementation, but it would diverge PornLemmy's source code even more from the standard, base Lemmy, making future changes cumbersome, and a second one that was easy but hacky. I went with the second one 🙃.

If you go to settings, you should see the "Auto expand images" option (if you don't, wait a bit for Cloudflare to push the new changes). It will respect your choice until you clear the browser's cache, close the incognito window if that's what you're using, or switch to a different browser. It's not pleasant, but it's honest work.

Mainly just wanting the ability to not have all pics auto-expanded as an option.

I took this as "auto expand is the only one that makes sense", because, you know, you're on a site called PORNLemmy.com . It's kinda the whole point to see NSFW stuff :), so having blur as an option doesn't make practical sense, IMHO.