my issue is specifically the background image getting blown up to fit (poor wording on my part, apologies) and becoming blurry
i'm sourcing from images from unsplash and using the url i get when i open the image in a new tab
No worries! I see - when you copy the URL from the new tab, Unsplash adds on some parameters to the link to compress the image so it's smaller/faster to load. If you delete everything in the URL after the question mark (including the question mark itself), that should serve the image at a bigger size and higher resolution so it won't be blurry.
A word of warning though: I highly recommend saving the image in a folder with your Twine HTML file and using a relative URL instead of hotlinking with the URL straight from Unsplash, at least for your final published build if not during the WIP process.
That way, your project won't be dependent on Unsplash's servers or yoink its bandwidth and you'll never have to worry about the image not loading/loading slowly. This does mean it's slightly less convenient to playtest using the Twine editor's "play" button as the images won't load that way, but imo keeping the HTML file open in a browser tab and just save to file + refreshing it to make changes isn't the worst alternative.
mini tutorial on how to use relative URLs under the cut for anyone reading who isn't familiar : )
