In my early Internet days before I found community on the Internet, I used to browse dragon adoption sites. Then I discovered the Dragonriders of Pern book series in my ever-growing thirst for dragon-positive stories (stories where dragons are friends), and got really into browsing fanmade weyr sites.
Before I go on, though, I'd like to preface this by saying that the books have been around for a long time (the first story was published in the 1960s!) and contains some very dated notions on gender roles, sexuality and the notion of consent. The author herself has said some very questionable things about homosexuality.
Even so, they were my first contact with clearly queer characters in fiction that were not presented in an inherently poor light back in the 90s. They could ride dragons! In fact, all male greenriders are gay? I did not know I was gay yet, but something about the acknowledgement of gay people (gay men, at least) existing AND doing plot-important things meant something to me. While the stories were still mostly very heterosexual/sexist, and like, weird about sexual orientation, to the point where I couldn't ever imagine existing as a person in it...I still have a fondness for the world described.
This project does not touch on any of the above topics, but I wanted to make a note in case anyone was interested in looking up the books: the writing doesn't hold up to our understanding of these topics in the modern day, so I would caution anyone looking to start reading them now.
Basically, in the DRoP series (which is actually sci-fi, not quite fantasy) the big ridable dragons were genetically modified from the smaller firelizards native to the planet of Pern. In increasing order of rarity, they came in green (female), blue (male), brown (male), bronze (male), gold (female; also called "queens"). (Note: some fan sites expanded on the colour variety. There are, in fact, some rules governing which combinations of sex/sexual orientations can bond to which colours...which at least one modern fan weyr has scrapped, to my delight, but I digress.)
These tiny dragons bonded to people in a less strong way than the dragons did, and were appealing because they were smart and didn't come with all the responsibilities of being a dragonrider. They're generally treated as pets/companions and unlike full dragons, one person could have multiple. The highest number bonded to a single person in canon is 9-10 (Menolly in the Masterharper of Pern), but this is a very big exception.
The appeal is in that you had choice - getting a rare coloured dragon is not a certainty because the dragon chooses you (and you'd only ever have one), but you could always choose whether or not to feed a baby firelizard (the action that would bond it to you). Of course, the eggs would be pretty rare to begin with, but you could Impress multiple firelizards in your lifetime. Having many firelizards was Cool and considered a Mary Sue factor, especially if they were rare colours.
In canon, weyrs are the places that dragons, their riders, and the support staff (and their children) live. On the Internet, these were websites that described the webmaster's fanmade weyr and characters, and usually offered visitors a chance to let their characters Impress a dragon from their weyr. You would make a page for your character, and email the webmaster to offer them as a candidate for a dragon hatching. After enough characters were collected to stand, the webmaster would write the results and you could proudly display your character's new dragon on their page. (I didn't actually go through this myself.)
Some of these sites also offered firelizard adoption, which was much simpler - you could get a random firelizard right off the page, no approval needed. The general rule was that you were not to keep trying until you got a colour you wanted (which I ignored because I wanted to see the gold firelizard art). These were offered either using a script that would pull a random colour when you clicked the button, or as a set of eggs linked to pages with the firelizard displayed on it. (I had the most fun with the latter.)
The firelizard eggs are a precious memory to me, so I wanted to recreate the experience. Initially I started trying to code pidgeons, but since that was taking a while due to the complexity, I decided to do some actual firelizards instead. (Sorry, I don't have the full weyr experience here...)
More information is on the Image Gen page!