User account photos folder is missing

So i finally started to clean up and condense all my microsoft stuff under a fresh, new, single microsoft account. I had a hodgepodge going back some year. new office account etc.
in trying to get some cohesion amongst my windows account image, my microsoft account image, my image displayed in office and on the microsoft account website, i figured id return it all to default.
well that didnt quite work out. it created a problem ive been working on all day. for starters, my local account windows 11 VM (which i tried to use for reference) is using a different default image than the 11 install im typing this on.

it seems to be using the same one my windows 10 pc uses which is also the same image that displays on the MS website under account image after removing the old avatar id used via the "remove photo" option.

another complication in the whole process is the icon in the top right of the microsoft website shows my initials, not the account image shown on the account website, nor on my windows 10 or 11 pcs.
in my effort to return to stock/default and get everything lined up I tried to set my default windows 11 user image to the one found in %programdata%\microsoft\user account pictures, but found that folder completely missing. What I did have was a "default account pictures" instead. best i can tell this shouldnt be where its pulling its images from yet it is. unsure if this is related to the problem im having or its something else entirely, but the folder is "user account pictures" on both my 10 pc and my 11 vm.

so nevermind the weird hodgepodge of avatars i have flying around with zero continuity or cohesion (love how i can set my avatar on any apple device and it updates and lines up on all other devices perfectly but i digress)

how do i address the discrepancy between those images native folder being "user account pictures" and them seemingly being in the wrong folder for some reason somehow?

I assume its going to be some combination of creating a folder, moving the default images and doing someething in the registry but im hoping someone with a bit more insight into the matter comes across this.

I've read about folks losing files only to find they had been moved to their OneDrive account, off the computer.