Best bedwars texture packs

Hello everyone iam new to blender, iam taking baby steps learning this program so please go easy on me, after I model an object in blender I draw some textures on it, I exported as FBX and set it to Unity, the model is white in unity, no color, no drawings, no textures. I searched far and wide for the answer and for now I have tried:
-Pack the files. File > External data > Pack resources.
-Turning path mode to copy and enabling Embed textures
-Baking with cycles, target set to Image Textures
-Exporting as any kind of supported file
NOTE: if I drag the texture from my pc to Unity everything works fine, I just want to have a single file FBX or. Blend with everything in it
What am I doing wrong?

Inspiration can be a fickle thing. The muses may guide our hearts towards a particular passion, but they don’t always stick around to see us through it. As a child, Kousei Arima felt a natural attraction to the piano. He could play music by ear, was a gifted mimic, and had boat loads of potential to one day dominate the instrument. With the help and encouragement of a family friend, Kousei’s mom set him on his desired path, but life as a pianist was harder than he thought. Rather than playing for fun and expressing himself through music, she wanted him to be able to make a living through his music, so she went as hard on her little pianist as possible, going as far as to beat and abuse him if he underperformed or tried to play a piece in his own way. By the time the terminal illness she’d hid from him took it’s toll on her, his passion was gone, replaced with the cold, robotic delivery of one who could deliver a piece perfectly, but found no more joy in doing so. He lost his mother, along with his ability to hear the notes he was playing.
Two years later and about three feet taller(I’ll GET to that), Kousei still tinkers around with the piano, but hasn’t played it seriously, to the chagrin of all who enjoyed his work, or just hate to see him so incomplete. It’s at this point, like all down-trodden men who’ve lost their luster for life, that along comes that one girl to bring color back into his world. Her name is Kaori Miyazono, and she’s a violinist who cares nothing for rules or convention, finding childish but somehow wise joy in every aspect of life, and with this one chance meeting, Kousei finds a new muse… A capricious, cheerful beauty whose revisionist musical performances instantly connect with the crowds she plays for, and whom seems singularly obsessed with performing alongside Kousei, and helping him to relaunch the career that he’d so recently abandoned. But her dedication to helping him to overcome his tragedy hides a secret tragedy of her own, and one simple lie she told back in April will live on to define their relationship as they change each others lives through mutual inspiration.
I haven’t seen everything that’s been produced by A-1 pictures, but I honestly can’t remember seeing anything they’ve done that looked outright bad. Sure, Sword Art Online and From the New world looked a little sloppy at times, resorting to broken character models to show fluid motion at reduced costs, but if that’s the worst they can do, then they could do a lot worse. They seem to take a lot of care with their work, putting an admirable amount of effort into quality control, like letting a low budget get the better of them would be an insult to their pride or something, and if that observation is correct, then I like the way they think. I’ve noticed that they generally have a penchant for putting a lot of energy into special effects, and then using just enough budget saving tricks to compensate without going overboard or letting it become noticeable. Key frames are well drawn and pleasing to the eye, and they feature a little more than just flapping mouths, with occasional shifts in posture to keep the characters expressive.
Of course, there don’t need to be special effects in a show about musicians, right? Wrong. Not only are special textures like water given special treatment, but we often get visual representations of the emotions brought out by a piece of music, which use environmental and 3D effects to keep our attention during the sequence, especially towards the end when Kousei and Kaori are playing together in a fantasy sequence, and the camera liberally revolves around a beautifully 3D animated piano. The characters also have a lot of inner monologuing that’s shown to us in artistic fashion, reminiscent of His and Hers Circumstances, but what I found the most impressive was the actual animation of the characters playing their instruments on stage. I can’t confirm this, but I have heard from a few people that A-1 pictures used a technique similar to rotoscoping, and I feel no justification for doubting this rumor, as every movement of the performing musicians, from fingers on the keys to the way the bow’s movements perfectly matches the music of the violin.
It would be so easy to get away with having a still image on screen while only the performers arms moved, and more intense note being played offscreen while only the audience’s frozen faces of adoration are showcased, but as I said, that would be an insult to A-1. Kousei, Kaori and several others put their entire bodies into their performances, losing themselves in it, and you feel every drop of their adrenaline. Character designs are beautifully polished and easy on the eyes, with it’s only major departure from reality being that the musician characters look a little more distinctive and exuberant than non-musicians, like Kousei’s friends. Well, okay, there is one other unrealistic detail that bothered me a bit… The difference in height between 14 year old characters and themselves at 12 is fucking insane. My jaw dropped when they said that Kousei quit the piano at 12, because he was so short that when he sat on the bench his feet didn’t even touch the ground. I could have sworn he was, like, 6 or something. It’s my only real issue with the visuals, but it’s still a pretty jarring one.
The music of the series… Do I even have to say it? It’s a series about musicians, and you can’t do something like that if you don’t have the knowledge or resources to pull it off, and they seriously pulled it off. Not only is it full of classical music, you can tell the difference in the way these pieces are being played, and the music that is meant to inspire and astound people does exactly that to the audience as well as the characters. From what I gather, Yuna Shinohara, a decorated Japanese violinist who was only 21 at the time, played the music for Kaori, and her wealth of training and experience did not go to waste. I can’t find as much information on Eriko Kawachi, who played all of the piano pieces, which is unfortunate. The show’s actual soundtrack was composed by Masaru Yokoyama, and while it isn’t as memorable or powerful as the character-based performances, it’s still solid and well-orchestrated, so it’s a shame it gets overlooked in favor of the insert tunes.
The English dub was produced by Aniplex, and features a lot of newer actors from this decade, alongside a few industry veterans. I’d like to say these newcomers step up and use this show as a platform to make a name for themselves, but I’d be stretching the truth a bit, mostly on account of the many loops that Your Lie’s text throws them for. Their performances were not consistent, which is a direct result of their material not being consistent, and I don’t really think it was fair for them to be thrown into something this eclectic. For the most part, they do a fine job voicing the characters while nothing’s really happening. It’s just characters talking to each other, sounding like natural teenagers going about their lives. Where they really shine is during dramatic scenes, and ho boy are there a lot of dramatic scenes in this anime. There’s a lot of pain, insecurities, confusion, all of that fun adolescent stuff, but with a much harsher but still believable edge to it once you realize the kind of real life circumstances that they’re dealing with.
While some of these issues may be worthy of an eyeroll from the viewer… Most of the characters who are in love with Kousei fall into this category… They’re going through issues that you probably had to deal with as well, and you can scoff at it from your seat as a grown up, or laugh at how silly it is for this obvious harem to try and be something more, they’re feeling something you’ve felt at some point, whether you remember it or not, and they damn well make you feel it. The exception, where several otherwise amazing actors begin to falter… Is with the gag humor, when the characters go SD Chibi for exaggerated reactions, and I don’t think they were ready to transition the specific roles they were playing into it. Max Mittelman, for example, is one of the best voice actors to come out of the 2010’s, and even though he hasn’t been acting long, his voice control and dramatic chops have landed him plenty of leading roles. He can do comedy under the right circumstances… You’d know what these circumstances are if you’ve seen One Punch Man… But he sounds horrible during the gag jokes.
It’s even worse for Erica Lindbeck, who had a tough job playing such a nuanced character as Kaori, whose happy-go-lucky persona hides a darker interior, and she does a great job of it, but the gag scenes just make her sound like a despicable asshole. Smaller characters face the same issue, albeit on a smaller scale, but the few veterans are able to navigate the minefield a lot more skillfully, like Wendee Lee(Who, in all fairness, never has to do a gag scene), Stephanie Sheh and Carrie Keranen. They have the experience to stretch their roles beyond the appropriate tones, which comes in handy here. The adaptive script is loose, but still accurate enough, and changes the vernacular so everyone sounds more like contemporary English, without ever sacrificing the intent of the text. They make a handful of charming and character-appropriate references, like occasional nods to Charlie Brown and The Phantom of the Opera, although they also use the phrase ‘as you know’ a few too many times. They probably should have changes some of the text, as a lot of it, when translated, sounds weird coming from 14 year olds.
Okay, so, here we are again. It wasn’t too long ago that I was calling out modern anime fans for letting their emotions cloud their judgement, saying that they often give perfect scores to any anime that makes them cry. Seriously, you could give a critic a massage, a home cooked meal and the best sex of their life and you’d still be working harder for a 10/10 than most anime do. Back in 2016, I’d just uploaded my reviews of Clannad and Clannad Afterstory, and I asked social media to recommend an anime that had genuine feels… nothing manipulative, nothing manufactured, nothing too formulaic, just an anime that would touch me emotionally and make me cry with sincerity. The overwhelming answer was Your Lie in April, a show I’d been avoiding due to all of the hype. I finally gave it a watch, and did it stand up as a heartfelt masterpiece, or did it offer the same old same old? Well, to be honest,it’s a little of both. My feelings on this show were mixed the first time around, and the second viewing hasn’t changed that.
Unfortunately, Your Lie doesn’t get off to a great start. The first thing we see is a foul ball hitting our man character in the head, lying on the floor and bleeding with what has to be a serious concussion, but not only does he heal immediately, but he shares the blame for the broken window the ball flew through. That’s not just bad, that’s disturbingly bad. It sets an early precedent for him being a sad sack with no will of his own, which I guess is kind of accurate, but it also makes his closest friend look like a monster for taking advantage of it(Trust me, this feeling is only gonna get worse.) I try to move past this, but almost immediately, it becomes apparent that all three of Kousei’s friends are some of my least favorite cliches in anime history. His two primary friends are Tsubaki and Watari, and they are… Respectively… A childhood friend who’s hopelessly in love with the main character, and a girl crazy guy who exists to make the main character feel desirable in comparison. I am so sick and tired of these two archetypes being stuck in orbit around at least half of the main characters in the medium.
And Kaori’s worse, because she’s a trope that I usually don’t see in anime, and I’m not complaining about that. She’s happy-go-lucky, she’s childish, she’s an enlightened soul who’s able to see all of the simple joy in life, and she comes out of nowhere to dedicate her life to dragging the main male character out of the slumps. She is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, which is to sexism what the Magical Negro trope is to racism. Granted, she deconstructs the trope a little bit, as she actually has a backstory and a reason to help Kousei, but she makes up for that small silver lining by taking the “Life begins at man” trope to a new extreme, as “Life begins AND ENDS at man.” I’ll give her this, she IS the reason I kept watching the series, as I was entranced by her violin performance in episode 2, and she made me want to keep watching so I could hear more of her work, which sounded even better when she played with Kousei. On top of that, she plays an important… Dare I say instrumental… Role in Your Lie’s deeper themes.
Your Lie in April is a story about inspiration, and it attacks this concept from every possible angle. As annoying and cliched as his friends may be, Kousei is a good character who has a great arc that deals with this theme. He begins as a child, having fun doing something that he’s gifted at, until he stops doing it for fun and starts doing it as a future career, being forced to perfect it and take it seriously by his mother, who pushes him to the point of abuse. She controls his life, making everything he does revolve around the piano, even taking away his cat and abandoning it somewhere so it can’t scratch his hands. He loses the ability to hear the notes he’s playing, and quits altogether to avoid his mother’s tyranny along with the intense pressure she put on him for not being good enough. On the surface, this is a very mature look at child abuse and the way it can have long term psychological effects on the developing mind, such as Kousei’s performance anxiety, and especially the fact that cats pose a trigger for him(And I mean the actual definition of trigger, not the bullshit internet definition), and the abuse in question is realistic, rather than cartoony or melodramatic.
Below the surface, this is a story for anyone who’s ever lost their passion for something they once loved. The idea that expressive and interpretive music is frowned upon, and only literal performances are acceptable in competition, which is enforced by both the competition committee and Kousei’s mother, gives an understandable reason for his loss of inspiration. His music was becoming routine, and pointless. I don’t think his inability to hear the notes he’s playing is realistic at all, but it’s symbolic for that loss of passion. When your work becomes routine, it becomes repetitive, and it finally becomes robotic. When your hobby becomes work, you fall out of love with it, which is why Kaori coming into his life was such a major turning point for him. She showed him that there was another way to play. She inspires him, breathing new life into his abilities, and helps him to separate his passion from the pain and sadness that he’d come to associate it with, and it changes his life in so many ways… He starts playing again, he comes out of his shell, and he even begins teaching a younger pianist… That he winds up inspiring her in return.
They also make an argument that you play even better when you’re playing for other people, and while I’ve never personally agreed with that, they make a compelling case. Your own music, your own performances, are not your only legacy. The music you inspire others with is just as important, as your work also lives on through their work. They make a great point when they say that it’s hard to play the piano when you compare yourself to Beethoven, but it’s not nearly as hard when you remember that Beethoven was once just like you, a rookie trying his best to measure up to the greats who inspired HIM. It’s a shame they had to resort to a manic pixie dream girl in order to pull this off, but it’s largely forgivable, especially considering certain reveals that happen in the final episode. So yeah, this is not a shallow series. There is meat to the story, and something meaningful that you can get out of watching it. I’d be happy to say that the series was also executed well, but sadly, this is where things start to break down.
The text of the series, for example, is severely lacking. The idea of inspiration and Kousei’s character arc are well written and exactly as subtle as it needs to be, but the other subplots… The romantic ones in particular… Are annoyingly obvious, and frankly, kind of arbitrary. I mentioned Tsubaki as a ‘childhood friend’ earlier, and while this should instantly telegraph that she’ll never get her guy… They never fucking do… She does absolutely nothing else to justify her presence. Everything about her revolves around her love for Kousei and why he won’t respond to it. Every aspect of her life ties in somehow to her love for him, and since it amounts to nothing, she could have been written out in the first half of the series. I won’t go into too much detail about the other romantic subplot, or how it offers Watari his only relevance to the plot(although he does have a few moments relating to the theme), but they commit one other huge mistake… They use constant, and I mean constant, voice over narration from the characters as they explain their feelings to the audience. It’s lame, it’s tedious, and it seems to be trying it’s best to keep YOU from thinking too hard about what you’re watching, because it doesn’t want the pointless teenage melodrama to lose it’s effect.
Another huge problem is the gag humor, which feels viscerally inappropriate and out of place. It makes the heavier themes of the show harder to swallow, and not just on an aesthetic level. For example: We see Kousei sustain head injuries during two of these gags, that result in him lying on the floor and bleeding out. We also see Kaori hit him right in the crown of the head with an axe kick, driving her heel down into his skull. Now, if these instances didn’t cause any lasting damage, and the people doing it are supposed to be seen as likable, how am I supposed to feel when his mother beats him in the head with her cane? I’ve seen him shrug off shit like that before, so I don’t care. Am I supposed to feel different because of the tone of the scenes? This isn’t the fucking Looney Toons. Hell, even the Looney Toons had consistency. I can’t be expected to believe that a portion of the material shown to me doesn’t count just because the writer was making a joke. That’s disgusting. I’ve complained about Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood making this mistake, but Your Lie is just as bad.
And then you have the plot, which did not work for me at all. Like, I said the themes were strong in this series, but they suffered one major setback. Kousei’s mother physically abused him and forced him to play music the way she wanted him to, all because she thought it was in his best interest. His friends, however, do exactly the same thing. Sure, they might not take away his beloved pet, but they still harass him, assault him, chase him, break into his room and generally act like complete assholes in order to get their way. He warns that his performance might not be good, he falters due to a psychological breakdown, Kaori has Tsubaki and Watari start roundhouse kicking him, and HE apologizes. How are they any different than his mother? Because it’s supposed to be comedic? I’m not exaggerating when I say that most of the interactions he has with his friends make me cringe, with their only justifications being ‘comedy,’ and the fact that they just happened to wind up being right. So the ends justify the means.
And then you have Kaori’s entire plot, which… Okay, I’m going to try not to go into spoilers, but if you’ve seen the show, you know damn well what I’m talking about. And this is the big one, the one that makes everybody praise the show out the wazoo, so I’ll try to be gentle. At the end of episode 4, Kaori faints on stage. At that moment, even though I was trying to enjoy the series despite it’s flaws, I couldn’t help it. I knew where this was going. I said, “Oh fuck, she’s gonna (censored), isn’t she?” I am dead serious about that. The beginning of the fifth episode featured her in the hospital, and folks, I predicted everything. I knew what was going to happen to her, i knew she was keeping it secret, I knew that it was going to be kept deliberately vague all the way to the end, I knew I’d never hear her play again(outside of maybe a dream or fantasy sequence), I knew what her backstory and connection to Kousei was going to be.
Knowing this stuff in advance took a huge damper off of the emotional impact of literally any point of the show. Granted, I did make one prediction that wasn’t true. I predicted we’d never meet her parents, which I wish had turned out true, because her parents are… Brace yourself for this… They’re Nagisa’s parents from Clannad. They are literally that. They own a pastry shop, they’re wacky and over-the-top, they live in said shop, and… Well, there’s one other spoiler connection, but that, along with a painful firefly sequence, made your Lie feel TERRIBLE at foreshadowing. I found myself, in both moments, shouting at my TV screen, “Okay, I get it, she’s gonna (censored), shut the fuck up about it!” So did the big bad tragedy work on me? No, of course it didn’t. The only part I got choked up at was a late scene when a cat died at a vet’s office, because it brought up painful memories for me. Don’t get me wrong, there’s something here, and it does make the experience a rewarding one, but it just couldn’t stick the landing.
Your Lie in April is available as a Rightstuf Exclusive, and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the price is offensively high. Even on sale as part of the site’s holiday deals, it’ll still costed 130 dollars for each HALF of the series, down from 160 dollars regular price. Used copies on ebay go for as low as 60 dollars for each HALF, and I can not recommend you pay that much for an overrated series. You can watch it for free on Netflix, but if you absolutely need a physical copy, I’d actually go against my better judgement and recommend the Malaysian bootlegs on Ebay, which do come with a dub for a fraction of the official price. The manga is available from Kodansha comics, and volume 1 even comes with a sweet exclusive cover if you get it from Loot Crate. The live action movie is probably available stateside, but from what I’ve heard about it, I don’t care enough to check.
Your Lie in April isn’t a great anime, but it’s also not a terrible one. So, overall, is it good or bad? Well, to be honest, I didn’t enjoy the vast majority of it. I found the gag humor annoying and in bad taste, I found the comedic violence way too similar to some of the tragic material, there are too many cliches, and I caught on to some of the more important plot points way too early to fall for them. Having said that, I can’t say the experience was a bad one. The themes of Kousei’s character arc resonated very strongly with me, as someone who’s currently falling out of love with a long time hobby, and while I found his friends to be wholly unlikeable, his piano rivals were much more interesting, and I actually want to see more of him interacting with them. The final tragedy would have been a lot stronger if it hadn’t been so obvious, or if it at least had a proper explanation, and you can’t possibly deny that the audio and visual production went beyond top notch. It had a lot of problems, but honestly, it’s an okay show. It doesn’t live up to the hype, but it’s worth checking out. I’m being generous here, but I’ll give Your Lie in April a 6/10.

A day late but we're here, my little cheeto eaters! Remember as always to grab your bingo cards and let's get our little long weekend slumber party going. This whole fucking thing is FORTY MINUTES LONG, you're all lucky that my sibling who was supposed to spend the day chilling at my place has apparently forgotten that plan.
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• There's a new opening style than all her other vlogs. Not sure if that's because of Morgan but also I don't care enough to go hunt down exactly which influencer she cribbed this style from. It features a lot of horse butts. Also her using her phone in bed, which I thought she didn't do because she's mindful.
  • The music she uses is this song, which is DEFINITELY not copyright-free, so have fun learning how actual copyright law works, Paige! The lyrics playing over the are "there are times when/it feels right to/run away, run away/when you ask the same old questions/every day, every day/Why do I set the stage?/Why do I find my place on the pedestal?", because I guess Paige went to the Love is Blind school of "make sure the lyrics of whatever song you use are really, REALLY literal"
• Giveaway winners! Congrats to the three people who won a pile of Paige's old garbage! Don't worry though, if you didn't win her trash, she'll be doing a lot more of these because she "appreciates [us] guys so much" and "wants us to experience some of the things that I'm so grateful to get".
  • Nothing says grateful like giving away your extras to strangers and instead of doing anything to promote them like you were supposed to in return for getting them for free, using the existence of this stuff as a way to leverage yourself up on the algorithm.
    • There's also Dairy Boy in the giveaways, of course, because no one's buying it organically.
• She explains moving Louie, it's the same stuff she said on Instagram. Weirdly horses are like the only animal I've never gotten super obsessed with, so I have no idea how BS this is, but it's almost word-for-word her IG explanation, so it's the same level of BS that was. She does word this though as it being a "charity project" and "passion project" she "donated to", because there was a dearth I guess of places to keep your horse in the rich people part of Connecticut.
  • She has to first run to get a grazing muzzle so Louie doesn't overeat in the pasture. This sets off my internal bad animal treatment alarms in a huge way, but again, don't know enough about horses to know if this is warranted.
• Just kidding! Don't let Paige into a Tractor Supply unsupervised, she's too much of a ~country girl~ to not come out with "so much shit". She also got this beef jerky that looked "so good". It's Iowa Smokehouse beef jerky.
  • It apparently looked good because all she had for breakfast was coffee. Why she only had coffee I'm not sure, since it's not like she didn't have the time to get something better. Coffee and beef jerky for breakfast sure is a choice, and one I'm sure her intestines didn't make her pay for later. This summer is all about ~hot girl indigestion~.
  • Story time! This looks like "legit, real beef jerky", which Paige knows because when Paige was in boarding school she stayed with a family who had a lot of cows and they made their own beef jerky, which Paige was of course intimately involved in, I'm sure. Anyway this makes her have such high standards, which is why she loves when somewhere like Tractor Supply (an enormous fucking chain, Paige) or a "local country mart" sells jerky because it's always better.
    • Fun fact that took me less than thirty seconds to Google, this "real" beef jerky is also available on Amazon
• More of the same definitely not copyrighted song as she packs up Louie's stuff and moves him. There's a lot of woman laughing alone with salad shots as she packs up and pretends to talk to... someone and "carry stuff" (ie: stand around touching her own body awkwardly)
• Some weird things about this whole sequence - 1) the "farm" she moves Louie to appears to have very poor, dilapidated fencing, red flag for me. 2) Paige is wearing a white shirt and then a white cardigan the entire time while DEALING WITH A HORSE and it never gets stained or dirty, which tells me she did fuck all, 3) the only guy with her is this big bald much older man who I assume is the guy starting this venture, meaning he's almost certainly who films her cantering around on Louie without her wearing a helmet laughing, which is so unbearably awkward. Like imagine asking a random older dude to film you doing that in a pure white sweater, 4) when Paige brushes Louie he sheds SO MUCH. Is that bad? It feels bad. When a dog sheds that much, even in the spring, it usually means no one's been brushing it regularly, 5) Louie has such a dip in his back and it makes me wince every time, especially when Paige shows him next to another horse. I don't know what that's from, but I hate it and it doesn't look comfortable for him.
• Nance and Baloo are at home when Paige gets back so she's just going to "throw on a little outfit" and they're going to go out for Mother's Day in Brooklyn. Paige really, really didn't want to go into the city because I guess she's suuuuch a country girl (nice, Paige) but she's doing it for her mom and to see her sister
  • Oh my god she DOESN'T CHANGE HER SHIRT FROM THE BARN, she wears a white henley, what look like blue pajama pants, and a leather coat.
  • Nance steals some of Paige's clothes (how I don't know since they're totally different sizes) and according to Paige is"slaying the boots", a phrase I will pay actual cash money to never hear Paige say again
• Next morning, return of the out of focus camera, though it may have been by accident this time because it stays out of focus. Anyway serious business Paige with her serious business glasses is starting the day with some "desk work". Is that a thing? A phrase? What the fuck is "desk work"? Has anyone who actually does work at a desk ever called it that?
  • When she's in Europe it's definitely harder for her to sit and do computer work even though she has a laptop but starting the day on her desktop at the same time as her "whole team" (WHO) it really makes a difference for them being all on the same page.
    • Okay so my actual job in real life is doing shipping and order management for a small creative goods company. I know very intimately what goes into product development, order fulfillment, etc, and Paige is just straight up saying nonsense. Like I paused and gave serious thought to what possibly she could be talking about, and I don't know what all this "work" is. If she was making everything in-house that's one thing, but that's not work she could possibly be doing or overseeing from Europe. But if she's outsourcing stuff, having it sent to a warehouse, and, then paying someone to ship it out for her, I guess she's doing... development? But that makes no sense because again, she outsources everything. She isn't doing wholesale, there isn't a lot to arrange for pop-ups if everything is outsourced and pre-made and she's only supposedly having one this summer, she only has eight products so the website maintenance is pretty easy, as is accounting, and she only really sells stuff around a drop which she does maybe twice a year.......... like genuinely I'm baffled here. It's my job to do this exact same thing every day with products that aren't jeans or sweatshirts or whatever and I'm so, confused about what her "work" is.
    • Allegedly they're on the "final push" for so many big projects and you know what, if any of these projects involve Paige actually doing anything besides feeling three different samples of denim swatches or deciding which vendor she's going to outsource oven mitts to and saying "I like this" or "I don't like that", I will issue her an apology. I feel safe in the idea that I won't have to issue her an apology, but I will keep on on offer in the off-chance I'm wrong.
    • She just finished making a line sheet (genuine lol once I looked up what that was) and apparently we are going to freeeeak out when we see her new merch - sorry, elevated lifstyle products.
    • It's denim. She's been working on denim. She shows us the final washes but it's in direct sunlight so it's all blown out and out of focus so they look mostly white? But she got the "perfect color". IDK, it's a light wash. I prefer dark wash, actually. It's a lot more flattering and forgiving. But we've already determined my aesthetic and Paige's aesthetic are not the same aesthetic. She's nobly pushed back production six months because she refused to do a full run unless the wash was absolutely perfect. It was so expensive but she needed to love love love the denim, because it's really what she's passionate about and what she wants to do, she wants to be the best denim brand out there. You know, because she's hand-making this denim herself, not just sending instructions to low-wage Chinese workers while being afforded the privilege to fuss over the perceived quality for six months because she has parents who are willing to flush money down the toilet on this. Also, for the record, but denim is like... a choice? Like what is the vision, exactly, because every clothing retailer has some version of denim and people are already super married to their faves, so how exactly is this business model working for her, here. And it doesn't look like stretch denim either, which means it's going to fit a very, very narrow group of body types. Like speaking from ample experience crying in GAP dressing rooms over my "freakish" (read, not built like a popsicle stick) as a teenager in a time before jeggings, jeans are not forgiving and easily worn by everyone. The thing about what Paige is doing so far is that it's universal enough. You don't have to really tailor an oversized sweatshirt or trucker hat to fit you. Everyone can make room for another overpriced candle. But denim??? IDK girl, you do you.
• Paige makes Olivia a latte. Olivia comes in and say it's story time about coffee. Paige asks if she should turn off the camera for this and Olivia says no so Paige continues to film herself preening while Olivia tells her a story about how messy she is frothing milk. Paige spends the entire time interrupting her to go "no! No! No! No!"
  • They look at buttons and rivets and embossed leather patches for the back, and then sweatpants leg panel samples. Baloo hangs out with them and Paige tells him he's stinky. She eats toast.
    • WHAT IS THE POINT OF ANY OF THIS. She's not DESIGNING anything, she's just doing that thing like, you know when you're choosing your racer in Mario Kart and there are a couple hundred variations of wheels and chassis and you just choose the unique combos you want to put together? She's doing that but with generic clothing. I've been jokingly referring to her stuff as "elevated Zazzle" but this isn't even Zazzle because Zazzle you UPLOAD ACTUAL ARTWORK TO. Why is she re-inventing the wheel? What improvements does she think she's making TO A PROVERBIAL WHEEL.
• Not sponsored showing off gifting time! It's not in focus at all so we can't really see any of the products (professional!). One of the products she mentions is that she's friends with CYNTHIA ROWLEY'S DAUGHTER who has nepo baby'd her way into dropping oven mitts and aprons that look like Strawberry Shortcake's rejects. Like they're cute, but they're again little strawberries on white. Like tell me none of you silver spoon-ass bitches cook without telling me by making WHITE OVEN MITTS. Those will turn yellowish and burnt after, what a single batch of brownies? Taking a piece of toast out?
  • This haul includes her tennis Tommy bag. Not sure how she got it since she brags about it being "sold out everywhere even Poshmark and depop"
  • There is sooooooo much of this free bullshit. How does she even get this much free bullshit. Why do companies waste so much money sending this to people like Paige who don't fucking care and openly give it away. What is the point of an influencer. IDK at this point I'm spiraling, this vlog is like a third of the way through and nothing has happened.
• Paige unpacks with Nance. She has so many clothes and I don't think she's worn any of them. Full disclosure that this was the point I actually got annoyed and had to take a break and play some video games for fifteen minutes because while growing up comfortably or on the upper end of middle class in a generational wealth type of town has taught me a lot of patience for people with too much money, there is at some point a limit to how conspicuous over-consumption and waste I can handle, and that point for me came when I saw how many sweaters Paige has that look like they've never been worn. And the on top of this she has a giant suitcase of stuff she's going to depop! The environment? Never heard of her.
• Paige is going to get groceries. She's needed Nance's help to do all the hard stuff she's had to do today like going grocery shopping and having soooo many clothes. She goes to Trader Joe's, then goes to a horse shop and of course buys MORE SHIT SHE DOESN'T NEED. I'm not condoning what the French did when they invented the guillotine, like that was really violent and horrible, but the point is that the longer I watch this vlog the more I'm understanding their motivations.
• Paige goes on a sunset ride with her friend Lauren, this song plays in the background as a flagrant copyright violation, I realize at this point that there's no way this video is going to stay up without Youtube copyright striking it so I have to be extra detailed for posterity and we still have so much to go and this is going to take forever. Louie's back still looks horrible and as someone with inherited lordosis, I feel for him.
• Tommy facetime! He says exactly one sentence and catches a tiny fish, for those of you keeping track on your Bingo cards.
• Nance is still over Paige's house when Paige gets back because she never leaves. Paige is wearing old Dairy Boy sweats. At this point when I scrolled down to press the play button again I realized that Nance has posted a comment about how proud she is of Paige within seconds of the video being uploaded. I live with my mother and sometimes I still need her help on stuff like yelling at health insurance until they cover stuff for me and even I am confused by how codependent their relationship is. Like doesn't Nance have her own house? A husband? Other children? Paige has spent this entire vlog needing Nance's help to do everything from grocery shopping to folding laundry and acting like a teenager. It's a rich text for a therapist to one day unpack.
  • It's Taco Monday, this is just a dumb and boring version of Paige performing the white people taco night song. Also bewildering, Paige seemingly DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO MAKE TACO STUFF. It involves almost no cooking! She even bought the spices pre-packaged! She needs Nance's help on this too!
  • Undisclosed new cooking knife brand product placement. They are amazed that it............slices.
    • OH NO SHE SAYS SLAYING WITH BOOTS AGAIN ABOUT THE KNIFE END THIS MISERY
  • Ahahhahah the reason they're so impressed is because they've apparently been cooking with unsharpened knives. Like Paige didn't know you could sharpen knives. A master chef, ladies and gentlemen!
• Oh god we're only halfway through. Paige wakes up the next morning. She got so freckly yesterday (read: she's courting melanoma and is going to age like a raisin). She's going to go play tennis at a club in Greenwich her parents are members at (Note, she shows the logo which means you can spend five seconds googling to discover it's this club. Membership is invite only and it's gauche apparently to discuss how much membership costs, but the estimate is EIGHTY GRAND A YEAR. To be clear, that is nearly THREE TIMES the average American household income. Paige is the child of people who spend more in one year to play tennis a few times a week than most people do getting fucking doctorates, which clears up a few things for me: one, I've never gotten those texts where she casually demands Morgan Wallen pay her back tens of thousands of dollars like it's $50, but I guess to her it is like $50, and two, why everything about Paige and how she acts towards people and money in this video is a million times more effective at radicalizing people on economic policy than anything Bernie Sanders has ever lain awake at night dreaming of.
  • Camera going in and out of focus during this explanation.
  • Ah she's doing it with her mom. Again. Heaven forbid Paige breathe without Nance.
  • Oh also she has to shoot an ad in the tennis dress, but she definitely likes and would go to play tennis anyway.
• More unboxing undisclosed adver- I mean PR.
  • I'm so serious, tthe flagrant wealth being thrown around in this video and the amount of free stuff a trust fund baby with absolutely no merits or skills whatsoever is getting because she has 300K followers on Instagram that she probably bought half of is like the best argument for socialism I have ever seen.
• .Paige gets dressed in the third outfit of the day to go to the dentist. The pants are pointedly too big on her so they don't stay up in the waist and create this weird enormous kangaroo pouch around her crotch. She pairs that with a toddler sized medium t-shirt for a football team she's probably never heard of, a choker that looks like something a boy band member in the early 2000's would wear but out of fake pearls, and cowboy boots. It's... the look sure is looking, let's just say that.
• Paige opines on how much she prefers to do vlogs at home, but don't worry, she won't stop doing travel vlogs for us! (Oh thank goodness, where would we be without the insights we get from them.) She feels like they add variety to her channel (what, no, we LOVE coming with you to the barn to watch you ride without a helmet over unsourced music! five times a vlog!). Sometimes she feels like there's this pressure to show us as much as she can, which explains why all we see in her travel vlogs is hotel room bathrooms, tennis matches, and the tops of various tabletops in restaurants. Anyway she feels like there's pressure because in reality she's there for Tommy. Which we KNOW, that's the entire PROBLEM, Paige. If you were HONEST about the fact that being a WAG on tour sucks and you don't get to actually see the places you're pretending to really go and immerse yourself in, we WOULD HAVE FEWER COMPLAINTS AND YOU'D FEEL LESS ANXIETY, the problem is that you have to keep compulsively lying about how cultured you are and how you really ~got a feel~ for the location. Just stop lying!!! Stop!!! Lying!!! Challenge!!!!! The anxiety you feel and the reason you have to monitor this subreddit comes from your CONSTANT LYING.
  • Ugh she would NEVER have gone to ROME if it weren't for Tommy. I think this is a ploy for authenticity but boy is it coming across as privileged.
    • I do think in her own Paige way though this entire monologue she has is about something I've noticed her talking around a lot - I think she's afraid if she stops travelling and being a WAG no one will care about her. I think she's terrified of doing what makes her happy, which is being home, hanging out with her mom, riding her horses, and spending her parents' money. But if she just let herself do the things she actually liked and stopped trying to always pretend to be cooler and more interesting than she is, no one would keep paying attention to her, because it's not like she has a sparkling personality or wit or unique point of view. Like I'm an interesting person to talk to, but if I tried to make a vlog of my life it would be pretty boring. I work a 9-5 M-F job and the most interesting part of my life is when I go to a concert or craft fair on the weekend or one of my neighbors goes out of town and I watch their cat. It's not riveting, but I also don't need to be doing fascinating things in order to be or feel like an interesting person. But people like Paige who need to always be travelling and going to events and flaunting how busy they are are often really sad and empty people. They're not doing any of the little mundane things that make people happy and spending time connecting with the people around them, they're just always moving around because they're afraid if they stop for five seconds, people will see that the only thing they have going for them is all that movement and travelling. I think Paige is constantly torn between the anxiety that comes with constant travel and isolation and putting herself on display and removing herself from the things that bring her a sense of calm and security, and the anxiety that if she allows herself to feel calm and secure, she'll lose the attention she craves. IDK seems like a thing she shouldn't keep indirectly admitting to in vlogs, seems to kind of undercut half of her material, but what do I know.
  • Also she really is going to positively contribute to Tommy and his life and career, ie: she needs to go home and feels comforted by home because that's where her mom and Amanda wait on her hand and foot and everything is about her, which she misses when she's with Tommy because when she's on tour with Tommy she has to accept that he's the center of attention and she's not.
  • Her home vlogs have been performing the best, like, significantly. Since she probably buys views and comments, this just means she likes them better and therefore buys more engagement for them.
  • Apparently her analytics are telling her that 30% of her views are coming from the "explore" feature, which she says is YouTube rewarding her for being consistent, and, uh. No. Not how that works.
    • I mean yes if you buy engagement it will put you in the algorithm more, but this is the time in the video where she accidentally self-owns. If you're an actual channel getting actual views from people who actually enjoy watching you, then VERY LITTLE of your viewership should be coming from the "explore" feature, MOST of it should be coming from subscribers or regular viewers or people who watch similar content. That's how the majority of people watch YouTube or find new videos to watch. But if fully a third of your viewers are coming from what's essentially a randomizer button, that pretty much confirms Paige is buying views and/or that a lot of viewers leave after a minute or two. Because if her content was good on its own, people would see it and subscribe, and then she wouldn't need to rely on the "explore" feature. But if she, as she says, is consistently getting a third of her viewership from that feature, than that means that a third of people are just randomly watching whatever YouTube puts in front of them and not engaging with her at all, meaning the ONLY POSSIBLE explanation is that she's essentially buying enough engagement to keep appearing on the explore page, but buying the opportunity to be put in front of people isn't actually getting her a larger audience because what she's serving them is a warmed-over turd.
  • Anyway Paige is counting on you not knowing the extreme basics and trusting that she "knows someone who used to work at YouTube who told her that's how the algorithm works"
    • Um if you don't know about social media - no one who works at YouTube or any social media company knows how their algorithm works unless they're the ones writing it, and if they do know, they're not going to tell you because that's extremely valuable, proprietary information and also there's like a lot of papers and NDAs and non-competes they'd be breaking if they did. They're telling you to upload consistently because it's good FOR THE MEDIA COMPANY. The company is trading in being a content hub, so they need people to consistently be uploading content, ie: raising the value of their site in a way they don't have to pay for. That's the entire business model of every. Single. Digital media platform. Heck, that's how most dating apps work too. The product is data. They want you to be giving them free product.
  • "I don't know, like I don't like doing things just for social media anymore?" HAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAH
    • And a week later you spent a weekend attending influencer parties in the Hamptons for....... what exactly. The scintillating conversation?????
    • She's very quick to say that's not the case if she has to shoot an ad! Loves shooting ads! Please keep sending her free stuff!
    • God this is taking me multiple hours but at this point I've sunk too much time in and also am convinced this won't stay up for copyright issues, so I'm taking a break to like, stretch and clean the bathroom, anything to get me moving and listening to my own thoughts which are in complete sentences.
• I'm back after cleaning the bathroom. I've been at this so long that my sibling has shown up. But I only have ten minutes to go and I REFUSE TO GIVE UP. This whole completely unhinged and unintentionally revealing rant has approximately a trillion uses of the word "like" is from 21:00 to 26:00 and if you want to watch it you can. I probably should have transcribed it for a full AP Lit level analysis, but I'm tired. If we're lucky, when Paige tries to re-upload this with copyright-free music, she'll have kept that in there.
• Paige ordered a shed! She's so excited!
• The fence looks mildly less jacked up when they go back. Paige is brushing Louie constantly in this video. Fourth time I think we've seen her do this. I feel like there's a lot more to horse care than brushing them and she only shows us this part because it looks aesthetic and she doesn't do any of the actual hard or necessary parts like shoveling horse shit, but what do I know.
  • This sequence uses unsourced but definitely copyright song number three!
  • Fun fact: Paige is the same fake brown color as Louie's dappled neck. Aw, you know how pets eventually look like their owners? Cute.
  • Shout out to Paige's friend (perhaps Amanda? Olivia? Can't keep the preppy brunettes straight anymore) who actually wears a helmet riding.
• Next day, we open with a bit of this song (not sourced, copyright infringement number four, possibly more that at this point I no longer notice tbh). Paige puts on boots to go to the new shed and realizes the vlog is going to be so long because she's never done a whole week at a time before. Because I've made it this far, I'm the best. (Aw.)
  • Paige calls Tommy to wish him happy birthday and films it, which seems... odd. Especially since she doesn't film it in a way where he can see she's filming.
  • Paige gets tea for breakfast (nutritious) and a coffee for the guy at the barn we must have seen earlier. His name is Aaron. I could do some google sleuthing and find him probably, but I don't care. Paige met him going on trail rides at her old barn. Do middle aged men usually hang out at barns doing trail rides? Just scoping out young idiots with disposable income? The whole thing seems sus. Apparently he has like seven kids.
  • Paige never realized how expensive pre-made sheds were, but it's a local business that makes it by hand! I assume the local business is called Costco And Sons.
  • More uncredited The Shins plays as Paige only loads the shed with blankets and nothing heavy or unpicturesque.
  • Another Tractor Supply run, at this point they're who really should be sponsoring Paige
  • Paige goes to say goodbye to Louie and he HIDES FROM HER IN THE WOODS
    • Girl.
    • Oh my god no wonder he's mad at her, they've been staying somewhere WITHOUT A STRUCTURE. He's been sleeping OUTSIDE. It got into the 40's every night in New England last week!!!
• Out of focus Paige talking about how she had suuuuuch a long day "running errands". Olivia didn't get to join Paige on her little horse girl excursions because she had to be at the warehouse and onboarding a new DB employee. Anyway Paloma is in town now
  • Paige learns that apparently you're supposed to be washing veggies as she prepares things to grill. PAIGE HAS BEEN COOKING THIS WHOLE TIME NOT WASHING VEGGIES. I.......... I am going to need to be sedated after this.
• Paige exfoliates and puts on a definitely not sponsored face mask
  • She's wearing skiing pajamas. In case we forgot she was a skier. Did you know she was a skier????
    • PSYCH, these are from previous ads with PJ Place but actually she really likes these and this one ISN'T an ad she just loves the product so much
• Paige is doing her makeup! We're at the end stretch! I'm almost there!
  • She took a day off of vlogging to go see her grandparents, but immediately segues into her Ulta trip. Because of her stupid grandparents, she didn't get to go to the barn, frankly how can she survive in these conditions.
  • Dairy Boy phone case plug! She was soooo specific about what she likes in phone cases and definitely didn't just choose between Zazzle, Redbubble, or (insert other brand here)
    • It's a shitty thin cover that looks like it protects your phone from approximately nothing and should cost $10 but I estimate she'll sell it for at least $40
    • Of course because Paige was so super particular about the details and business-minded when it comes to quality it took a long time to make........phone cases.......
  • Tommy calls and says hi
  • Paige rambles about her day and makes coffee. Tommy sent her peonies because he's "so cute". We see the phone cases and they're weird and ugly. More "gifting" (undisclosed advertising) that came in the mail
• Paige makes pickled red onions, every time she does it she changes the recipe a little bit even though she totally has a recipe and isn't googling. She starts pickling carrots which she says are going to "go bad soon" (that takes like six months, how do carrots even go bad?) She also does it in a water glass which, good luck ever drinking from that again without it tasting like vinegar.
• And then with no warning, it cuts off. That took me three and a half hours. It's been a journey and I hate it. If there is ever a vlog this long, I'm doing it in segments across multiple days because I'm exhausted by this much wealth and inanity. Time to go touch grass, start dinner, wash my vegetables before I do so. You know. The little things.

Exotic 9mm ammo is creative, to say the least, but is it worth your hard-earned money?
Can you trust your life with unconventional or even wacky bullets? Such as incendiary rounds or external hollow points?
Yes, but I don’t recommend trusting just any exotic 9mm ammo.
Most exotic ammo should only be used in a controlled environment, such as at the gun range, while other rounds are definitely worth loading into your EDC.
Below you’ll find my top 3 picks for 9mm exotic ammo, and then I’ll explain my reasoning behind choosing to shoot exotic ammo.
Let’s get started!

Top 3 Picks for Exotic 9mm Ammo

1. Underwood 9mm +P+ Xtreme Defender - 9/10 - Best Overall
2. G9 9mm 80gr External Hollow Point - 8/10 - Runner-Up
3. Fiocchi 9mm 124 Grain JHP - 7/10 - Best Imported Ammo

Best Exotic 9mm Handgun Ammo Overall

Underwood 9mm +P+ 90gr Xtreme Defender

Specs

• Casing: Nickel-Plated Brass
• Bullet Type: XD
• Bullet Weight: 90gr
• Muzzle Velocity: 1,550 fps
• Muzzle Energy: 480 ft-lbs

Pros

• Hard-hitting for a 90-grain bullet
• Reliable
• Trusted brand

Cons

• Expensive
• More recoil than the average 90gr bullet

Why We Chose It

Underwood 90gr 9mm +P+ XD is the best exotic 9mm ammo overall because it’s ridiculously reliable and packs a punch compared to other 90-grain bullets.
Shooters who aren’t afraid of a little extra kick (comparable to a 45 ACP) will quickly fall in love with these exotic rounds.
This ammo is so dependable because of the nickel-plated brass casing and the high-quality powder Underwood uses.
Nickel-plated brass is stupid smooth, so the empty case is 10x less likely to catch and cause a malfunction.
While you never see the gunpowder, it is one of the most essential aspects of ammo. You need a powder that will light no matter what when the primer goes off, that’s precisely what this Underwood +P+ ammo does.
In case you’re wondering, “What the heck does +P+ mean?” It simply means they put more powder in the case than the average round while maintaining safe pressures. There’s also +P, which we will discuss below.
The downsides to the best exotic 9mm ammo are its cost and the increased recoil from the extra power.
So if you’re sensitive to recoil, these are not the rounds for you. The increased recoil can also make a shooter less accurate as they try to anticipate the recoil instead of squeezing the trigger smoothly.
With that said, I would still trust these rounds in a self-defense situation because I’m not afraid to spend a little extra if it means I’m getting a higher-quality product. I want to stop the threat as quickly as possible, so the extra power will help, especially if they wear thick clothing.
You should test Underwood 9mm +P+ 90 XD for yourself before you need it and don’t have it.

Honorable Mentions

If you’re looking for a round with a little less kick, there’s also Underwood 9mm +P 90 Grain Xtreme Defender. It’s basically the same round with less powder than the +P+, so it has less recoil.
However, that also means it has slightly lower muzzle velocity and energy.

G9 9mm 80gr External Hollow Point

Specs

• Casing: Brass
• Bullet Type: External Hollow Point (EHP)
• Bullet Weight: 80gr
• Muzzle Velocity: 1,480 fps
• Muzzle Energy: 389 ft-lbs

Pros

• High-quality ammo
• No jacket separation
• Excellent barrier penetration
• Low recoil

Cons

• Expensive
• Lightweight bullet

Why We Chose It

The Underwood 90gr +P+ ammo only narrowly beat out the G9 Defense 9mm 80gr EHP because of its high price. However, that should be expected from top-of-the-line ammo that utilizes the latest technologies.
With G9 EHP bullets, you get the piece of mind, knowing there is ZERO jacket separation and incredible barrier penetration, all packaged with little recoil.
G9 Defense EHP bullets have no jacket separation because they’re machined from a solid piece of copper, so there’s no need for a metal jacket like a full metal jacket (FMJ) bullet has. This allows the bullets to be lighter, which means less recoil and higher velocities, but it has a couple of downsides that we will discuss below.
The EHP bullet is also engineered to penetrate drywall and windshields, which is ideal for law enforcement and self-defense scenarios.
While it is “barrier blind,” it’s also designed to “slow quickly in tissue to prevent over-penetration” while simultaneously transferring the maximum amount of energy to the target, making it a prime choice for defensive situations.
As I mentioned, the cons are the price tag and the lightweight bullet. The high price comes from the patented bullet design, so that you won’t find the EHP bullet on any other ammo (but there are similar-looking bullets on the market).
The lightweight bullet can be a pro or con, depending on your take. While it lowers the recoil, which is a pro for many people, it also reduces the energy. Lower energy means less knockdown power. The +P version of these rounds helps eliminate that concern, as well as the bullet design.
Overall, I’m blown away by the G9 Defense 9mm 80gr EHP with its barrier penetrating abilities, reduced over-penetration, and low recoil.
These rounds are perfect for recoil-sensitive shooters who still want to carry a high-quality exotic 9mm round for protection.

Honorable Mentions

The Sellier & Bellot XRG Defense 9mm 100 Grain SCHP is another solid copper bullet. It’s exotic because it’s not made in the USA but is a traditionally shaped hollow point bullet.
It’s priced perfectly for regular practice and carrying it without having to refinance your home. However, the ballistics are not as good as the G9 EHP 9mm Luger rounds, nor does it penetrate through barriers as efficiently.

Fiocchi 9mm 124 Grain JHP

Specs

• Casing: Nickel-Plated Brass
• Bullet Type: Jacketed Hollow Point (JHP)
• Bullet Weight: 124gr
• Muzzle Velocity: 1,100 fps
• Muzzle Energy: 333 ft-lbs

Pros

• Trusted brand
• Ultra reliable
• Dependable bullet design

Cons

• Low muzzle velocity & energy

Why We Chose It

Fiocchi is one of the most trusted ammo brands imported into the US. They manufacture reliable 9mm self-defense ammo, among other calibers.
This JHP ammunition functions flawlessly because it is encased in a nickel-plated brass casing, which is smooth like butter, nearly eliminating all malfunctions caused by sticky brass.
The jacketed hollow point has been trusted for generations to provide solid accuracy while reducing the risk of over-penetration.
These rounds are priced just right for the quality of the ammo you get when you buy a box or case of Fiocchi 124gr 9mm JHP.
I find the velocity and energy a little lacking compared to other rounds. However, this is partly due to the heavier bullet, so we’re not comparing apples to apples in that regard. One might think that the heavier bullet would help with stopping power, though.
Above all, Fiocchi 9mm 124 Grain JHP can be trusted in a home defense situation to end the threat to yourself and your family because of the low probability of a malfunction and the proven effectiveness of the JHP bullet.
Be sure to check how much Fiocchi 124gr 9mm JHP we have in stock today.

Honorable Mentions

If you’re looking for an exotic round that’s made in the USA, then check out CCI 9mm 53 Grain #12 Shot. This is unique ammo because it’s multiple pellets instead of a single projectile, very similar to traditional shotgun ammo.
In essence, you can have some of the benefits of a shotgun in your semi-automatic Glock when you use this ammo. I wouldn’t recommend using it for home defense; you might as well use a shotgun and buckshot for that, but it would be handy for rodents and pests.
I will warn you that the case is aluminum, so your pistol, whether it’s a Glock, Remington, Ruger, Sig, or Walther, might not like it and malfunction more than it typically does.

How to Choose the Best Exotic 9x19 Parabellum Handgun Ammunition for Your Situation

Most of the time, exotic 9mm ammo is used at the range for fun, but some of it is designed for concealed carry purposes. So how do you know which is which?
The best way is to test it and consider your situation seriously.
Let’s continue by defining “exotic ammo.”

What is Exotic Ammo?

Exotic ammo can vary widely and be a tricky term to define. However, after asking many shooting enthusiasts and spending hours researching the term, I’ve concluded that you can define it in two ways.
The first and most popular is the wacky non-traditional bullets. Projectiles like nails, oddly shaped bullets, two slugs or multiple shot sizes in one shotgun shell, incendiary rounds, frangible bullets, and armor-penetrating rounds can all be classified as exotic ammo.
The other way is to take the word “exotic” at its meaning and refer to exotic ammo as any ammo imported into the US. Most gun nuts don’t mean this when they use the terms exotic ammo, but I added a few to the list above, just in case.
That’s why brands like Barnes, Blazer, Federal American Eagle, Hornady, PMC, Speer Gold Dot, and Winchester were omitted above.

Intended Use

Whenever you’re buying ammo for any gun, whether it’s a 357 magnum handgun, 300 Blackout carbine, or 12 gauge shotgun, you should always consider how or why you’ll be using it, as some ammo is better suited for the range over self-defense.
For instance, CCI 9mm 53 Grain #12 Shot might be fun to try and shoot clays using your pistol; however, it makes a terrible protection round as it’s much less lethal than Underwood 9mm +P+ 90gr Xtreme Defender.

Cost

Exotic rounds cost more than regular 9mm rounds because they’re specialty items. It’s unlikely that you’ll need to stock up thousands of exotic rounds, as you would with target ammo, so it’s okay to splurge a little.
Reloading is often an excellent way to save money on ammo, especially for standard calibers like 9mm and 380 ACP, but that is not the case for exotic ammo, as it’s much more difficult to load and, at times, requires special tools. So you’re better off just buying factory ammo.

Reliability

If you’re using exotic ammo for home or self-defense, you need it to be reliable. Reliable ammo goes bang when you pull the trigger and cleanly ejects while cycling.
If you have a lot of malfunctions while testing your ammo at the range, I recommend continuing your search before using it as your concealed carry ammo.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are there special types of 9mm ammo?

Yes, there are special types of 9mm ammo. There are many different types of bullets, powder configurations, and cases; each combination has specific benefits that make it best in certain circumstances.

What is the most lethal 9mm round?

The most lethal 9mm round is the one you’re most accurate with. Generally, a JHP bullet is precise and lethal.

What 9mm ammo is most powerful?

+P+ 9mm ammo is the most powerful.

Parting Shots

Exotic 9mm ammo comes in many forms, so you’ll find some that provide a fun day at the range or protection based on your needs and budget.
My top pick for the best exotic 9mm ammo is Underwood 9mm +P+ XD because it’s reliable, reasonably priced, and produced by a trusted brand.
Be sure to check out all the 9mm ammo we have in stock at Ammo.com!
Exotic 9mm Ammo: Explained and Ranked by Experts at Ammo.com originally appeared on Ammo.com

My partner and I are incredibly excited for our first visit to Japan in a few months!
Would love feedback on -general thoughts on itinerary -if I’m missing any absolute must-sees -if anything on my planned itinerary could be skipped -recs for which areas to book accommodations in -if we’re trying to do way too much - I know it’s jam packed but we get little time off work and I really want to make the most of it!
THANK YOU I so appreciate any help ♥️
*Day 0 * Flight lands at 8:05pm in Narita
Day 1 TOKYO -Meiji shrine and walk around harajuku a bit - spend a couple hours thrifting in Shimokitazawa - visit Shibuya- see Shibuya crossing and visit hachiko statue, eat dinner here -Go out in Shinjuku (Golden Gai)
Day 2 TOKYO -Explore the akihabara neighborhood (nerd culture) -Go to Asakusa district (Senjo-Ji temple, nakamise shopping street) -Go to Tokyo skytree -evening airbnb experience - food and drink tour by local in Ueno
Day 3 DAY TRIP TO HAKONE → KYOTO -depart Tokyo early am -Visit an onsen hot spring (Tenzan or Yunesson) -Visit the open air museum -Go to Moto-hakone park — views of lake Ashi, hakone shrine, Mt. Fuji -time permitting go to owakudani - volcanic activity. Can try black eggs boiled in the sulphur springs. -head to Kyoto late afternoon
Day 4 — KYOTO [intentionally skipping arashiyama district, higashiyama district, Nara in order to prioritize other things]
-Philosopher’s path (Definitely want to see Nazen-ji temple, can consider Ginkaku-ji temple, honen-in temple, eikan-do temple, toyo-jinja) -Gion neighborhood - hope to see a glimpse of a Geisha (any recs for how/what time of day is best?) -Yasaka-jinja shrine (can see yarayuma park next to this) -Traditional ceremony at tea house in evening
Day 5 KYOTO -Fushimi Inari Taisha (orange gates) -Nijo castle -Golden pavilion (kinkaku-ji) and surrounding gardens
Day 6 KYOTO → OSAKA

• Osaka castle
• Dotonbori — (explore, eat takoyaki and okonomiyaki, see glico running man, eat at izakaya in yokocho alley)

Day 7 Saturday 9/2/23 — OSAKA → TOKYO

• Shinsekai neighborhood + tsutenkaku tower (don’t need to go up just want to see it)
• Kuromon market for lunch
• namba yasaka Jinja shrine
• back to Tokyo late afternoon

Day 8 TOKYO → home

• visit a head spa in the am
• lunch at Tsukiji market
• open afternoon, head to airport around 6 for 9:30pm flight

I recently played the game and i wanted to extract the soundtrack directly from the game files because i don't find the soundtrack in any site. I downloaded the program to extact the files from the game (CRI Packed File Maker) but when the extraction finishes there is only generic files with sizes minor that 1 MB ¿Is normal? ¿I need other program specifically made for the game?.
I'm sure that this is not the best place to ask this, but any help or related link is grateful.

Hi there! I was wondering if you guys knew any texture pack of Glowing ores for minecraft Windows 10 edition?

Title pretty much says it all. Everything has been downloaded in consideration of the texture and map packs...before they were downloaded NONE of my characters armour would appear. Now he is fully suited...without pants. They are equipped and show in the inventory as such with associated stat increases so idk...

Hi fellow dads. I’m in the UK.
Fathers Day is coming up, and mum suggested she gets me a new backpack. Currently ‘we’ (parents plus sons 9 & 7) use a Camelbak which is fine but it’s been outgrown so that will likely revert to one of my dailies - to be replaced with…….what? Needs to be able to hold 3 water bottles, snacks, plus my sons ear defenders and fidget toys for day trips (city & country), hikes, the odd theme park ride etc etc. Not much practical current advice around……
Any recommendations please? TIA.

Hello all! I am happy to introduce another round of the new and improved Yandel's Archives. This time around, we will be focusing on the theme of time travel.
Here are some notes before we start:

1. the post will not be ready straight away, but I have to have this live as a placeholder. Check back in maybe an hour to an hour and a half, it should be done by then, and you will know as it will be unlocked, but until then, it is a work in progress.
2. There is absolutely no discussion allowed on this post. It is an archive, NOT a discussion post. Therefore any concerns, corrections, etc., are to be sent to the accompanying post, which will be posted and organized in regard to categories of interest.
3. It is very important to note that the vast majority of these fics are either transferred over from the previous master list/ taken from a post made about a month ago or are sourced from our discord. All the same, it took a very long time to make everything how it is now, I kindly ask for some respect here. If there is a fic you don't like, do not downvote it. Simply move on. If there is something problematic with it that you would like to raise, the correct way of doing that will be through the accompanying post that will be made with this shortly. I will then add such warnings. Work with me and show respect for the work put into this task, I am absolutely willing to listen and add in required warnings.
4. Regarding problematic stuff- As I am sure you are all aware, ASOIAF is very much filled with horrible subjects throughout its books and shows. I will try my best to warn of what I can, but I have not read the majority of these fics. You need to always proceed with caution and read the tags (the majority of fics are ao3 anyways) and always expect dark themes fitting with ASOIAF, but again you are more than welcome to warn of them on the post I will be linking with this.
5. Wish to add your own recs to the list? do so via using the pinned template. If you do not use the template, your comment will be deleted. Do you want to add your fics of choice anyways but don't have the time to use the template? message me with a link and details, and I will add it in for you._______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

​
The fics will be categorized by the following.
Title-Person(s) who time traveled- the era they time traveled to
Please note that information is correct to the best of my knowledge, but there is a chance I missed something in terms of who exactly time traveled, as summaries and tags aren't always correct. Also the era part is purposely vague, if your fic rather it belongs to you or if you just like it/know it needs correction of the information provided, I ask that you see the companion post that was referenced above. Please work with me to make this list as accurate as possible.
With all that out of the way-
Table of Contents
NAME OF FIC- PERSON(S) TIME TRAVELING-ERA OF TIME TRAVEL FOCUS
A Hundred eyes and Two- Jon Snow reborn as Robb’s twin sister- canon era
A Man without Honor- Jaime Lannister- Canon era
A Stich in Time- Rhaegar and Jon Snow- Jon to Tourney at Harrenhal, Rhaegar to canon era
Adjust for the Wind-Theon (female)- Canon era
All Mismy were the Borogroves- Melera Heathersoon- pre-Harrenhall
Ancient Fire- Jon,Sansa, Arya, Bran- Dance era
And now their watch begins- Sansa, Jon and Arya- canon era
Another life, Another Jon- Jon Snow-canon era
Around Again- Sandor Clegane- canon era
Be careful what you wish for- Jon Snow-Dance era
Blood and Waters- Arya Stark- canon era
By Her Hand- no info atm
Changing Perspective- Ser Barristan, Ser Jaime- Robert’s Rebellion era
Come Again- Jon Snow (female)- canon era
Curse of the Old Gods- Robb Stark- canon era
Duty,given chance- Jon Snow- canon era
Fate of the Red Wolf- Sansa- canon era
Fly Away- Sansa Stark- canon era
Happily Ever After- Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen- Dance era
Her Grace, Queen Rhaenyra- Rhaenyra Targaryen- Dance era
Howl of the Dragonwolves- OC children of Dany and Jon- S4
If the summer of our lives could come again-Bran, Sansa, Arya, Davos, Gendry, Meera, and one more?- canon era
If you try to break me, you will bleed- Sansa- canon era
In Her Shows- Sansa and Dany body swap- canon era (s1)
In the North the King hides in the Snow- Jon and others(?)- canon era
Is it so far from madness to wisdom?- Jon Snow- Dance era
It’s All coming back to me now- Jaime, Brienne- Tourney at Harrenhal era
Kissed by fire~ Kissed by Steel - Sansa- Dance era
Lady Sansa of House Lannister- Sansa- canon era
Lets Just Resurrect the Bitch and Make Her Fix It!-Lyanna Stark- canon era
Live as a Wolf or Die as a Dragon- Jon Snow- s8
Memories of Tomorrow- Sansa, Jon,Robb, Rickon, Bran, Arya- canon era
No matter how bright a torch may burn- Cersei and Sansa body swap- canon era before Robert dies
Not another time travel story- Ned, Robert , Ashara, Cat, Elia,Kevan Lannister - Pre-Harrenhal era
Purple Days- Joffrey- Canon era
Robb Returns- Robb- Canon era
Robert Reforged- Robert Baratheon-canon era
Snowfall- Jon Snow- canon era
Strangers Again- Daenerys Targaryen-s2
The Burning Stag- Stannis- Canon era
The Dragon’s Roar- Jaime and Jon to canon era/ between RR and canon era
The Fate of the Dowager Queen- Alicent Hightower- Dance era
The Last Hope for Westeros- Jon Snow- canon era
The Lone time traveller multiverse- No info atm
The North Remembers- Sansa Stark- canon era
The Old Man of the North Saves House Targaryen and Stark-Cregan Stark, Rickon Stark, Visenya Targaryen, Joffrey, Aegon II, Aegon IV, and Aemond Targaryen- s8
The Pack survives- Eddard Stark- Canon era
The Raven’s Plan- everyone???- start of canon era
The Road to Victory-Jon, Sansa, Arya- Robert’s Rebellion era
The Stranger’s Son- Jon Snow- Dance era
The Sweetly Sung Queen- Sansa Stark- canon era
The Trials and Tribulations of Tywin Lannister, Time Traveler- Tywin- Canon era
The Wheel Unbroken- Jon Snow- Canon era
The Wolves Beneath the Weirwood- Jon Snow- s6
The cold remains the same- Book Jon back to show Jon body- s6 onwards.
There and Back again- Jon Snow- canon era
Time bows to neither man nor raven- Tywin Lannister- canon era
To go forward- Jon Snow- canon era
Twice Damned and Back again- Jon Snow- canon era
Twin Wolves of the North- Jon Snow- before Robert’s Rebellion
Valor Botis- Jon Snow-canon era
Wolves without teeth- Cat, Ned and the rest of the starks- post s8 era
You know too much, Jon Snow- Jon Snow- canon era
and give all the love that you have in your soul- Brienne, Jon Connington- Robert’s Rebellion era

Hi. So one debate that comes up quite a bit for producers is the idea that you don't need much gear to get into music production. However, if you look closely, a lot of these comments tend to come with a side-helping of "you can make anything in X."
To my mind, most producers tend to land (mostly) in either of two camps. You're either a songwriter who uses tweaked presets for speed or you're a sound designer whizz who has no problem opening a synth and making a sound from scratch before you get started.
I see a lot of advice aimed at the casual hobbyist who is willing to buy a DAW and maybe a couple VSTs, and then learn sound design from scratch. This is of course a fantastic skill to have, but it's not always something people want to get into. What I see less of is a guide to who gives you the best presets and sound sources to get going quickly.
On the DAW front, I hear Logic comes with a lot of great sounds and instruments. Ableton just released Drift - an excellent new synth, and they have their excellent sound packs that are designed to be used in multiple genres. (I tend to think that Ableton takes a little more work with its modular approach, maybe Logic is simpler here?)
Some obvious answers that spring to mind are Komplete by Native Instruments and Arturia Analog Lab V. Komplete gives you a lot of tweakable sounds right off the bat, but you can of course learn the synths and make what you want with them. Analog Lab is quite different in that it is quite literally a preset browser.
With that in mind, what are the absolute gold standard instruments that deliver great presets and a solid suite of sounds for a writer who is not interested in sound design? This could be anything, a DAW, a synth, a bundle - if you use it and love it - name it and we'll total up the most mentioned at the end.
(This question is mainly for people making electronic music in general whether it be EDM, IDM, house, techno... you get the idea....)

I see a lot of expats posting about problems and challenges in their new country, and I am not objecting to that. When you're unhappy, this can be a good place to find some support or at least a sympathetic ear. But I've lived outside of my home country for nearly three decades now, and I'd like to share my story and some of the positives I've experienced.
I was born and raised in Norway. By all accounts, that's winning the birth lottery. I'm proud to be Norwegian, and that will always be a part of my identity. However, in my teens, small town Norway felt kind of boring, and I wanted an adventure, so I went on a pilgrimage.
I was a computer geek before geeks became popular. When you're a computer geek, Mecca is in Silicon Valley, or at least it was back then. And so for my first real trip outside of Scandinavia, I moved to California as a high school exchange student.
High school was different. There was homesickness, but there were also new friends, new activities and a whole new climate. I arrived proficient in reading and writing English, but my spoken accent was very characteristically Norwegian. By the time I left, I was basically fluent. A slight accent remained, but it was no longer a barrier to communication.
I came home with a very pro-US viewpoint. I was dazzled by this land of opportunity, and in retrospect, I was overlooking some of the negatives, even back then. But I decided that I wanted to go back to the US for college.
I did exactly that. This time, I moved to Texas and enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin. This was my first experience really trying to live on my own (in California, I had had a host family) and it would be a lie to say that the international factor didn't make it extra intimidating. My dorm roommate told me he couldn't imagine what it would be like to be that far away from his family. Then his parents moved from Houston, Texas to Fairbanks, Alaska, so I guess he got to find out.
Even I can't find anything positive to say about dorm food, and there were some other problems. Surviving and thriving on a student budget could be tough, for one thing. But there's a silver lining to every cloud. I was able to obtain an off-campus work permit by showing the US government that the strengthening dollar had left my scholarship (in Norwegian currency) inadequate. Work permit in hand, one of the easiest student jobs I could find was a bus driver position with the university shuttle system. Not exactly your typical job for a computer science student, but it paid surprisingly well and I could schedule my shifts around my classes, so it proved a great fit. The only drawback was that junior drivers got no work over the summer when the university ran a much reduced bus schedule.
I solved that conundrum by going into trucking...helped in part by a really nice road trip I had stumbled into with a trucker friend the previous year, and by statements from him and others that I wasn't the trucker type and would never make it in that industry (challenged accepted!) Over the next few years, I was a college student from September through May, and drove trucks coast-to-coast every summer. I made it through 46 states and got paid to see the country.
That likely wouldn't have happened in Norway. Not because Norway doesn't have truckers, but because that kind of random detour from the "ideal" career path wouldn't sit well with Norwegian society. Norway likes social order. America likes individualism. I found that American friends found my little detour into trucking cool while Norwegian friends mostly just found it...odd.
Fast-forward a few years, and my first job offer out of college landed in my lap very unexpectedly. Through a friend in Norway, I landed my first full-time job. However, it wasn't in the US. Or in Norway. It was in Vienna, Austria. And it was too good to turn down, especially in an IT job market on life support after the .com bubble burst.
So I packed my bags and moved to Vienna. I still had an overly positive view of the US, although the way the US conducted itself in the wake of 9/11 would shake those convictions to the core. The job in Austria was fantastic in every way, I had fun at work, I had supportive coworkers...and then I had a few challenges.
One of them is that I have asthma. And in Austria in 2001, people still smoked inside. The first thing that happened in my new job is that I had to walk in and tell the three people I was sharing an office with that they could no longer smoke in the office. Thankfully, HR backed me up, but that didn't exactly win me any popularity contests I tried to be humble and explain as best I could that the asthma was beyond my control, and that did work...eventually. The ice thawed, and I settled into my new job.
But what about when it was time to go home? I did not have much of a social life at first. In the beginning, I could blame the language barrier -- much like my school English, my school German was inadequate at first. My coworkers were mostly fluent in English; the rest of Austrian society, not so much. And after all, I was in their country, it was only proper that I should learn THEIR language. So I put a lot of effort into that, speaking German with my coworkers and with anyone else who would put up with me. This was when I ran into another typical expat problem: Whenever I encountered an Austrian who spoke English, he/she would detect my foreign accent and switch to English unprompted. It took me a while to pick up on Austrian accents in general and Viennese German in particular, but eventually, I did.
That still didn't help my social life. Nor did the fact that bars and other similar venues were off-limits due to the aforementioned asthma. My coworkers were nice and polite, but Austria seems to have a bit of a taboo against socializing with coworkers outside of work. Truth be told, this is a nut I never quite did manage to crack. I did eventually make a number of friends in Austria, but the majority were fellow expats.
One of those friends was an American who had moved to Austria for personal reasons, but still tried to run a business along with a business partner of his back in Florida. To make an already-long story somewhat shorter, they hired me on a skilled worker visa and I moved back to the United States. I was excited to be in the US again, and I was not sorry to leave Austria behind. But I also don't regret taking the opportunity I was given in Vienna. I learned a lot from my years there.
Since then, my career path has been more normal. I've mostly lived in Florida since, with the exception of a few years back in Norway during the Great Recession. Even then, I wound up working for a well-known US company, so I'd sit in Norway fielding conference calls from Oklahoma and Texas. Then I moved back to Florida again because my wife (now ex-wife) decided she didn't want to live in Norway. At this point, I've lived in Florida continuously since 2012. And while I miss friends and family in Norway, life in Florida has been good to me. I've met great people here, and I've had adventures that wouldn't have been possible back home.
My asthma likes the Florida climate. Warm and humid sounds like a nightmare to some, but that warmth opens up my lungs and the humidity keeps the worst of the pollen out of the air. On the social scene, many Europeans call Americans "superficial", but I find that makes it easier to break the ice and make friends. So not everyone you meet is going to be your new BFF, but what's the harm in meeting them anyway?
People often ask me why I would leave Norway when the quality of life there is "so much better" (their words, not mine.) But quality of life is subjective. Sure, there are things I like better in Norway than in the US, but the reverse is also true.
Life has not been the straightforward path I'd envisioned in my teens, but it has been an adventure so far, and I can't wait to see what's around the next corner.

Hello!
Recently, I've been getting back into HD texture packs for my games, and I came across something rather interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Jd55CHBATg&ab_channel=WhatHappens
This link leads to a YouTube video showing off a texture pack for Mario Kart: Double Dash by a user the uploader calls "yoshiprod". Searching up this username points to unrelated accounts, and the pack itself is missing.
I've looked through Dolphin forums on the Wayback Machine, all to no avail. It may have existed or had been deleted around 2019-2021.
It looks like there was a ton of effort that went into the pack, and it looks super clean. I was wondering if anyone has this specific pack left around somewhere, and if it can be archived in some way. Any replies are appreciated.

Hi. Right now my skincare consists of the Cerave Foaming cleanser -> The Ordinary lactic acid -> Basiron 5% gel (it says benzoyl peroxid on the pack, idk if that’s important.
I ordered some new products to fit into my skincare routine, because I struggle a lot with acne scars, small bumps and redness on my cheeks. Generally textured skin.
Is Cerave Foaming Cleanser -> Cerave Smoothing Cleanser -> The Ordinary Lactic Acid -> The ordinary Niacinamide -> Basiron 5% gel too much?

Hi. Right now my skincare consists of the Cerave Foaming cleanser -> The Ordinary lactic acid -> Basiron 5% gel (it says benzoyl peroxid on the pack, idk if that’s important.
I ordered some new products to fit into my skincare routine, because I struggle a lot with acne scars, small bumps and redness on my cheeks. Generally textured skin.
Is Cerave Foaming Cleanser -> Cerave Smoothing Cleanser -> The Ordinary Lactic Acid -> The ordinary Niacinamide -> Basiron 5% gel too much?

Hi. Right now my skincare consists of the Cerave Foaming cleanser -> The Ordinary lactic acid -> Basiron 5% gel (it says benzoyl peroxid on the pack, idk if that’s important.
I ordered some new products to fit into my skincare routine, because I struggle a lot with acne scars, small bumps and redness on my cheeks. Generally textured skin.
Is Cerave Foaming Cleanser -> Cerave Smoothing Cleanser -> The Ordinary Lactic Acid -> The ordinary Niacinamide -> Basiron 5% gel too much?

Buying a new bike soon, budget is 3-3.5 k. I am looking for an all rounder that I can use for bikepackingas well as blasting gravel trails. I plan to purchase a second set of wheels and tires to convert it easily for road riding and touring with friends. I am also very interested in longevity of the bike and for it to hold its value as best it can. I live in Southern California and am planning on taking numerous trips over the next 5-6 years up and down the west coast with a combination of road riding as well as using motor vehicles and Amtrak to move up and down the west coast to start tours and bike packing trips.
I have seen online and heard that the Grail is the "All rounder" of choice, but I would like to explore national parks and ride on some more technical and challenging MTB trails as well as light gravel and the road. For this the Canyon website recommends the Grizl, and this also aligns with my bike packing aspirations since it has more mounting points.
I would sincerely appreciate any advice or anecdotes to help me make this decision, I am recovering from knee surgery right now and cycling is now my endurance sport of choice as it is far better for the knees compared to running.

Buying a new bike soon, budget is 3-3.5 k. I am looking for an all rounder that I can use for bikepackingas well as blasting gravel trails. I plan to purchase a second set of wheels and tires to convert it easily for road riding and touring with friends. I am also very interested in longevity of the bike and for it to hold its value as best it can. I live in Southern California and am planning on taking numerous trips over the next 5-6 years up and down the west coast with a combination of road riding as well as using motor vehicles and Amtrak to move up and down the west coast to start tours and bike packing trips.
I have seen online and heard that the Grail is the "All rounder" of choice, but I would like to explore national parks and ride on some more technical and challenging MTB trails as well as light gravel and the road. For this the Canyon website recommends the Grizl, and this also aligns with my bike packing aspirations since it has more mounting points.
I would sincerely appreciate any advice or anecdotes to help me make this decision, I am recovering from knee surgery right now and cycling is now my endurance sport of choice as it is far better for the knees compared to running.