And that's it, folks!
Results will be up complete with trophies and judge's feedback in the next 24 hours (Really sorry for the delay, but real life kind of got in the way! Please be patient a while longer...)It's time! First of all, because I love keeping you in suspense, my thoughts! As the judge, my votes don't count toward the total, but in case you're curious as to how I would have voted:
Best Character: Mandle. I found it easy to get inside the character's head and feel what he was feeling.
Best Story: Sinitrena. Maybe because it was based on a true story, but I could feel the tension throughout the whole piece.
Best Setting: I'm going with Sinitrena again here. The little touches, such as the colloquial term VoPo and realism really brought me into the world.
Best Writing: This is really a toss-up between Mandle and Sinitrena, but I'm going with Sinitrena. Mandle's was excellent and I got inside the character's head, but something about Sinitrena's stayed with me and made me want to go back and read it again and again.
Best (or Worst!) Bureaucracy: Sinitrena. From her story, I got a good idea of how the bureaucracy worked and the sense of low fear that was prevalent throughout the story.
And now onto the feedback!
MandleThis was a well-written piece, and you did a good job of conveying the main character's frustration and emotions. I especially liked this line: "Fucking sue me. I didn't want the book to end." You also did a good job of telling us what was going on without hitting us over the head with it, where you talk about the disease eating away at your mother's mind. I'm also a little unclear why she wanted him to read
War and Peace to her. Was it a kind of talismanic thing ("if my son hasn't read it to me yet, I'm not going to die?" "I know I'll definitely meet my son again because I want him to read that book to me before I die?")
SinitrenaI have to be honest and say that the Berlin Wall never meant much to me except a name and the vague knowledge that it came down at some point (I was born at the end of 1982, so although it happened in my lifetime, I would have still been a little kid in another country and we never learned about it in school). However, reading your story gave me a brand new insight into just how serious things got over there, so thank you for that (and big thanks to your mother for her information too!) I also want to check out that movie you mentioned (hopefully there's a subbed version as my German is at a very basic level and I've forgotten most of what I learned. One day I'll pick it up again. But I digress

)
Again, being honest, I think this is probably one of the best pieces I've ever read from you. There were just a couple of mistakes:
The girls' feet thumbed - I think you meant
thumped
Thumbing means, well, to make a gesture with your thumb.
They entered in pairs, one pair from each side of the train car - The 'side' of something usually refers to the horizontal layout (so, for example, two pairs of VoPos entered the rear of the carriage, one from the left and one from the right) I honestly don't know if this was a mistake or not, as I've no idea if the VoPos really did things this way. If you meant that one pair entered at the front of the carriage and the other at the back, and they sort of met in the middle, then it should be
each end of the train car. If they entered from the left and the right and both pairs moved down the train car together in a group of four, then your word choice was right

Um. I hope that makes some kind of sense?

I also liked the glossary you included at the end; it was a good way to clear up terms without shoehorning definitions into the text.
BaronI really got into this story too; I loved the idea of the Sixth Form Resistance (I was a bit of a rebel at school, so it appealed to me!) I agree with Sinitrena that there was a bit of "As-You-Know" thrown in there which weakened it slightly. Whelkins strokes his hall monitor's sash; we get to know from this action that he's the hall monitor, so the characters don't need to spell it out for us earlier

It's a shame that you weren't able to complete it; you had a great idea and I would have loved to know what happened next.
And now, for the results! As I said before, my votes don't count so it's all down to our voting public!

So...first place with the Golden Key is
Sinitrena, with
7 votes!

And, in
joint second place with
4 votes and the Silver Key are
Baron and
Mandle!
So, over to you, Sinitrena!
