Someone else doing the challenge I did this for commented that it felt a bit like an NES sprite, which to me is very high praise; working at that size and having any readability is monumental (the reason given was that it read like it was expecting CRT blur to provide midtones, which i suppose is basically how i was thinking about it subconsciously the entire time--"i don't have access to a midtone, how can i fake it?").