#it appears to save it all as html so it could in theory be exported to a new blog altogether

[consistantly-changing]

Some things I will add regarding the Tumblr Utils method:

If you have other python software installed, you might need to remove them lest your computer have an issue with which version of Python to run the script on, I had to remove a C++ emulator which was clashing with the python for some reason, though admittedly that program never actually worked for me.

Use the command window rather than trying to download and run the code yourself, the link in the document points to a version of the code that was incompatible with the current Python version I was using and I wasted close to two hours trying to force it to run before giving up.

The API key request appears to be automatic, so you don't have to wait for one of the few remaining staff members to personally authorize you.

This is the current line of code that works to backup your account:

tumblr-backup --save-audio --save-video --tag-index --incremental blog-name

Replace "blog-name" with your blog name.

save-audio and save-video are self explanatory, however I did encounter some issues with posts where videos couldn't be saved. The program will give you a post number pointing to which post couldn't be saved, so if you wish you can go and save those videos/audios through a different method. tag-index creates an index of every tag you've ever used, which is helpful but also note that it means every tag. incremental is perhaps the most useful one, as it allows you to keep updating the backup. The document uses --i, which according to the script I ran is no longer used.

Good wifi is absolutely recommended as this thing ate up most of my bandwidth and took nearly 3 days for about 91000 posts. Another important command, especially if you have wifi troubles, is

tumblr-backup --save-audio --save-video --tag-index --continue blog-name

If ever your command is interrupted, this allows the program to continue from where the last increment stopped. I made a notepad file containing these two lines and just copied + pasted them any time the program crashed.

You can use your computer while this runs, I set mine up with a power connection and disabled the auto shutdown feature. I do recommend doing this, it's not difficult as long as you don't have the world's most unique computer problems like I did.

Btw much as I love to make fun of twitter and reddit's business decisions, I have 0% trust in tumblr's management to not go a similar route so this is your gentle reminder that you should regularly go to your blog settings to export your blog. That's a fancy way of saying you can download a backup of your blog so if everything goes down you'll still have a backup of your posts & convos.