There are some documented issues with Google Fonts where specifically many variable fonts don't play with with -webkit-text-stroke.
The font that is discussed primarily on github et al. is Montserrat and while someone did provide some static Montserrat files as a quick fix, I am finding there are many more fonts with this issue beyond just that one.
The text renders with little cross lines all over the words (see picture).
While I understand there are other ways to attempt to create text-strokes, they won't work for me, so not looking to re-invent the wheel as far as the CSS part goes.
The solution seems to be to just self-host the static versions of the fonts.
However, I have tried to find where to download the static versions of the fonts, but they don't seem to be available via Google Fonts.
I have read others post about merging contours of the variable font which I guess means making it static again? Is there a tool out there where you can just convert the variable font to static or perform this "countour merge?"
Or is there a way to download the static versions from Google and I just don't know it? (note I don't mean a static URL, I mean the static version of the font.)