this can't just be me who remembers this extremely niche portion of early internet, around maybe 2004ish there was this thing called "Pixel Playgrounds", a bunch of pastel and cutesy personal sites people kept up with their elaborate pixel art. Anyone remember this??

people (including me, as an elementary schooler) would get really cheap domains one way or another and make pixel art in MS paint or however we could, mess around with HTML, have those "affiliates" buttons, make adoptables, this was a huge thing I was into when I was a kid

whenever I mention them to literally anyone though no one remember this... I remember going on allthingskawaii dot net to search for new Pixel Playgrounds to be submitted to the community database, there was sugary-star which was a big one, apple crunch...

This one called Catch a Star is still up and I just found it last night, and they posted a little article on the history of this little community. I miss it a lot ;A; http://caz.pausedlife.com/Site/History.html

relics of the past... I salute you... thank you for inspiring me for so many years

it was all so fun and creative... those were the days