We also need some way to keep it from getting so wide on narrow displays. On my phone, once you're a few pages in, the next page arrow is all the way on the edge of the screen. Multiple times I've gone to the very last page cause it's hard to click the next page arrow. Not even sure what the use case is to go to the last page.
Here's a screenshot showing page 10. The pagination displays so many page numbers in this case that the arrows are completely off screen (lower page numbers will have them getting closer to the edge).
Agree that the contrast is wrong, but I think the active page button should be muted, since it’s the only one clicking on makes no sense. Your example, but inverted.
Not sure how easy this would be, but perhaps change this to a js userscript and..
expanded it to use the theme vars to set the highlighting (so it can work with both dark and light themes).
add to GreasyFork and name script accordingly e.g. "Kbin Better Page Navigation.js"
(i am admittedly not very knowledgeable when it comes to userstyles vs userscripts).
EDIT:
i went ahead and created a "userscript" based on your "userstyle" which uses the kbin's theme vars to work with whatever theme is in use (only tested with the 5 current kbin color themes).