Dear friends, dear community...

We will be shutting down Belletristica towards the end of this year.

This decision was really hard for us to make, but ultimately it was surprisingly unanimous among the developers and fairies.

Answers to all your questions can be found here: https://belletristica.com/de/books/64491-journey-s-end-english-version/chapter/376073-table-of-contents

It truly saddens us, because we have taken many of you to heart over time and know all too well how much this place has become a home for many, including ourselves. We already know that the shutdown will inevitably hurt those among you the most who actually deserve it the least. Those for whom we would actually like to continue. And that, in turn, is what hurts us the most about the whole thing.

But there is a limit to how much unnecessary trouble we are willing to put up with, and although you have probably seen over the years that this limit is very resilient, unfortunately, it still exists. And for us, it has been significantly exceeded for several years now.

It was a difficult and unexpected realization, but we faced the uncomfortable question of whether any of us still does this willingly and passionately and is genuinely happy with this work, or whether we have been merely struggling through and acting purely out of a sense of duty and responsibility, both to each other and to the community. Perhaps also out of loyalty to some old friends here, with whom we share nostalgic memories, but with whom we hardly find time to chat anymore, if they are even still here.

And the sad answer is simply that none of us feels comfortable or even sufficiently appreciated in this role anymore. I know this must sound absolutely brazen and ungrateful, because we often receive a lot of loving messages and wishes from you and are regularly very touched by them. But as beautiful as these moments of support are and as far as they have carried us through many bad times, they ultimately only make up a vanishingly small part of our daily interactions and experiences here, and most of them range from unpleasant to sometimes absolutely disgusting.

It would now be very easy to say that we have simply taken on too much. The project was too big, too ambitious. The team too small. And yes, we openly admit to a certain extent, because all of that is true. That the project is too big for so few is definitely a very large part of this burden. But that's always been the way it is. To a certain extent, that's just how we are, and it mostly works for us. For some, it's simply easier to dream unrealistically high than to work towards something simpler. The burden alone has not destroyed our joy in the project and our will to continue it to this extent.

Even an almost unbearable burden can be carried for a very long time, as long as there is a very good reason for it. We followed this good reason for a very long time, and it was like a bright light always there. But with each passing year, it has become harder and more laborious to see this light, until in the end, it was only a memory. And the realization that we have been struggling in the dark for a while now, following the memory of this light, came much later.

To be quite honest - and this is the uncomfortable thing that's not so easy to say - we are very, very tired and disappointed by really many things and also many people here. Tired of the constant lies, intrigues, the nasty tricks, the deceptions around every corner. Tired of a community that increasingly works against us instead of with us. That tries to outsmart and trick us at every turn. Tired of a user base that becomes increasingly demanding, ungrateful, and rude, but at the same time less willing to contribute in any meaningful way.

And no, this certainly does not apply to everyone. We can easily list a few hundred people to whom this does not apply in the slightest. And probably a large part of those who read this text at all belongs to that group. Many more go above and beyond, sometimes to the point of self-sacrifice, to help others here. And of course, there are also countless who neither stand out positively nor negatively. All those are not meant here.

So, what exactly is this limit, and when is it crossed for us? Well. Where exactly it is, we have either forgotten or never really knew. But what we do know:

• The limit is crossed when more than half of all troll reports we receive turn out to be blatant lies in the end, where someone from our own ranks fakes an attack and in the end was the perpetrator themselves. For a bit of attention. I don't know how many times I've spent an entire afternoon and evening just to conclusively expose a fake troll because someone was bored again. Even worse, when it's a user you previously actually valued and respected. It was curious when it happened for the first time. It was weird when it happened for the second time. But more than half? More. Than. Half. Not 50:50, but more like 60:40.
• The limit is also crossed when I again sacrifice half my weekend to keep overloaded servers running and then have to realize that despite all the problems, people were still online in various cheat groups spamming loads of copy-paste trash, whole Wikipedia entries, and always the same pictures in chat groups, just to snag cheated levels, while others were happy if they could get so much as a single chat message through.
• The limit is crossed when pinboard posts are regularly answered with a kilometer's worth of lorem ipsum, only for the original comment to be deleted afterward, because this way, there's still the dust from the non-deleted answers, and we surely won't notice. And those who are caught usually do not admit it or apologize despite concrete evidence, but rather spin long stories, try to talk their way out and deny it, try to waste our time even more by playing dumb and asking questions they already know the answers too, or immediately become snappy and angry that we dare to investigate and uncover their cheating at all.
• The limit is crossed when almost every single "Help I set my story to hobby mode, but someone wrote me a negative critique" ends with me checking what the critique mode actually was at the time of the comment, and back then it was on frofessional or forge fire. Really? Choosing too hard a criticism mode and not being able to handle it is not ideal, but it can happen. I understand. But the fact that the default consequence from that is to quietly downgrade the critique mode and then knowingly report the innocent commenter... When I added the additional invisible field "original_criticism_mode" for comments, I thought I was beign paranoid, because hardly anyone would be so perfidious. Thanks to 90% of the reports for disproving this concern.
• Above all, the limit is crossed when the fairies are increasingly treated as if they were chatbots or servants, to the point where they no longer know for whom they are actually making the effort and ultimately lay down their work.

All these things are unfortunately true, and I could now list very much more, but I feel like the point is made. We are tired of working against you. Fighting against external forces and nasty problems and thereby fighting for the community... We gladly did that. Fighting against the community every day for... what exactly? To have a writing platform? I'm sorry, but that's not a rewarding goal.

"For those who are not like that," is the only answer that still comes to our minds. And I apologize to all who are now annoyed because they feel absolutely not addressed by any of this and can only shake their heads at this list of examples. Or worse, those among you who have already been directly or indirectly affected by such actions. You are really not meant. We love that you are here. We would have lovedto offer you a home for longer. It is because of you, that it hurts us the most, that this will end. But our joy and passion for this seems to be permanently gone, and I see no realistic way how we can muster the time and energy needed, purely out of a sense of duty and without passion, to prevent everything here from corroding and - first slowly, then increasingly faster - getting worse, broken, and unsafe for everyone.

We could also tell you dozens of stories about annoyingly greedy and cold-hearted business stuff we have to deal with, shabby practices, legal worries, and such problems that make life difficult from the outside. Similarly, we could talk for hours about the most miserable bugs and server problems, or tell stories about trolls and spammers and such riff-raff. And sure, all that may also be very exhausting at times. But these problems can all be endured and overcome, as long as one sees a purpose behind it.

But if the above-mentioned is our baseline of mutual respect, if we have to deal with the aforementioned actions and even far worse people every day and have to ask ourselves several times a day "what am I actually doing with my life and for whom?" When we constantly feel that a good part of the people for whom we do all this is already plotting the next nasty scheme as soon as we turn our back. Then it really becomes difficult over time to see the purpose.

Based on this, by the way, we also have absolutely no hope that the platform will not be flooded with an absolute deluge of automatically generated texts in the next months and years, for which there is neither solution nor answer. I don't actully know whether I should be wondering why this hasn't already happened or whether I should instead wonder how much it actually already happens and we just haven't noticed. The possibilities are now increasingly available and accessible. And to appeal to a sense of honor of which we have been empirically and repeatedly proven for almost a decade that it simply does not exist to in far too many people, even we lack the optimism for that.

I started programming Belletristica when I was 25. Recently, I turned 35. Looking back at what I have done in the last 10 years of my life, I see that almost all of it has gone into this platform. I see a lot of good and beautiful things in the story. Friends I would never have met otherwise, experiences I would not have had otherwise. Books that would never have been written and much, much more. But I also have to realize that between these beautiful experiences and moments of light, in reality, almost every free minute was simply marked by unnecessary frustration, anger, and work.

I have forgotten the feeling of leaving my phone in another room without getting panicked about missing a server outage or an important message. Or sitting at the family table during the holidays with the certainty of not having to quickly open the laptop for an uncertain amount of hours due to a newly discovered security vulnerability. Or just inviting friends over without the rightfully worrying that they will hardly ever hear more from me than "Sorry, I just have to do a quick urgent thing for Belle."

A while ago, I casually heard someone ending a long-term project with the words "I feel like I set myself on fire to keep everybody else warm" and my reaction was just a "Haha, feel that". And that was without so much as looking away from my code for even a moment. It sounds unimaginable, but it's actually only now, in hindsight, that I start to realize that this is probably really not a healthy or desirable reaction to such a statement.

The mere thought of another life with all its beautiful moments and opportunities that raced past me during the last ten yeard, during all of this, fills me with legit dread. A lot of questions force themselves into my mind.

Are you proud of what we built here?

Yes, definitely.

Would you do it again or recommend it to someone?

No. Definitely not.

They'll still do it tho.

But will you miss all of this here?

Yes, of course, a lot.

Will you miss 99.9% of the daily moments here, tho?

Definitely not. Not in the slightest.

Is the last beautiful 0.1% worth the life you currently live?

Unfortunately, no. Quite a decisively no.

Then what exactly was your "yes" to "Will you miss all this here?" even worth?

AWhawhaäh.

Now what does that silly sound mean?

It's an onomatopoeic expression of despair, meaning something like "don't ask so many such stupid questions that only have depressing answers that make you sad". Sorry, inner voice, but I think that's actually quite clear.

Anyway, I will miss the people. At least on paper, because actually, I've been missing most of them for a long time already. The only ones I really find the time to do anything with nowadays, are our mods, and unfortunately, that's mostly when there's a problem. And they are, along with admins and fairies, the ones who are most involved and get the most grief. I'd rather just hang out with them again.

I can hardly remember when I had time to just hang out in the community and have fun, whether officially or as a pseudonym.

That was probably on the Odyssey or Sturmtrotz, right?

Yes. I think so. That was a nice time.

And how long ago was that?

AWhawhaäh.

Are you happy like this?

Hahaaha. No. It's time for something new.

What will you see when you look back in a similar way at the last ten years when you're 45?

Definitely something else. Not this.

But hopefully, many of you, still. In some way or another.