I use brave and think it’s the best browser available, so I’m not arguing against it or anything, but technically it just supports use of the onion protocol, it does not provide the same full suite of protections that the tor browser does

As Brave says themselves:

For users who currently require leakproof privacy, we recommend using the Tor Browser, which provides much stronger and well-tested protection against websites or eavesdroppers using advanced techniques to uncover a true IP address.

https://brave.com/tor-tabs-beta/

really “normie” is a normie term now, ever since Wednesday on Netflix became a pop culture phenomenon. I’ve heard people in real life use this term

.ch (Switzerland) and .me (Montenegro) both seem pretty stable and safe choices.

.ch has been around for like 30+ years