Anonymous asked:

First off congratulations on coming back, I'm really glad you are back, was blogger the back up you once said you were preparing or did you just have to hurry and find something quick and this was your first choice?

I had no real plan. I was always expecting that if the blog got taken down, it would be because of some sort of legal threat. In that case, I would adopt a new identity on a new service, and it would be completely disconnected from this one. I hadn't planned for the possibility of getting arbitrarily banned with virtually no warning, and needing to transplant everything over to a new site.

After the ban, I spent hours looking over various websites, but I couldn't find a half-decent blogging service that had the same kind of features as Tumblr. I was mainly going off of articles made during the porn apocalypse, intended to direct porn-posting Tumblr users to new communities. But so many of them were just expanded Twitter clones, and I want a blog, not a social network.

I very nearly went over to Dreamwidth, but I absolutely hated the LiveJournal-esque layouts and interface. I tried Bdsmlr, but it's a dying site that doesn't allow any customization, and you can only see about three posts if you're not logged in. For the questions, I tried ask.fm, and I hope to God never to have to use it again. It's like Tumblr without the blog component, and you're constantly being sent questions from random people, with no apparent way of turning that off.

Eventually, I just needed somewhere to put posts up, so I got this account for the hell of it. And luckily, it came with a built-in contact form, which accidentally solves the problem of asking questions. But this is really my last resort: I still need suggestions for a proper backup service, for the next time the forces of "Safety" come after me.