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The Five-Minute Smallville Subsite FAQ by Derek Dean |
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Q: What is Five-Minute Smallville?
It's the subsite of FiveMinute.Net dedicated to Smallville, one of the many Superman TV series that have appeared over the years. It's referred to by the abbreviation 5MSV. (See the main FiveMinute.Net FAQ for information about the site as a whole.) Q: Who's in charge? The section head of 5MSV is Derek Dean. He contributes to the subsite fairly regularly and handles any submissions to the subsite. You can contact him at his 5M.net address. Q: Is 5MSV open for submissions? Yes and no, and we welcome your submission. To view a list of uncalled fivers, please visit the List of Uncalled 5MSV Episodes at Derek's site. Q: Huh? Derek's site? List of Uncalled 5MSV Episodes? Er, yeah. Derek, in case you missed his job description in his FAQ, is a computer programmer. Thus, every so often, his geekdom just overflows beyond the normal bounds of work and causes him to write software for himself. One of his (so-called) brainstorms is to write a fiver tracking system to smooth the fiver-calling process. Q: Oh my gosh. What a nerd. But it also sounds kinda cool. How does it work? Well, like it's described in the 5MD FAQ. But just to copy and paste: You can visit the List of Uncalled 5MSV Episodes to see what's available or not. If you find one you want, sign up for an account. You can add fivers to your personal called list, remove them, draft them online, even submit them automatically to Derek via the site. Q: You went to way too much effort. What else did you do? Well, I included an email notification system. Basically when you check out a fiver, you get 3 months to do it. If 2 months have passed without a submission, I send you an email reminder at which point you can optionally renew the fiver if you'll need more time. I then send you an email reminder a week before it's due, and then, if not renewed, I expire the fiver, return it to the uncalled list, and email you about the change. It also emails you when you submit a fiver, and when I pass a fiver on to Zeke for publication. I also mocked up a stats page similar to the one like the staffers have, though it only lists fivers done for the subsites covered by my site. Q: That sounds really neat, but do I have to use your site? No. We can still do things the old way. If you see an episode you want to call, email me. You can also submit your fivers to me the old fashioned way as well. Q: What if I want to do a fiver for an episode that's not on the uncalled list, but hasn't been published? Obviously, if it's been called by someone else, you'll just have to wait for that person to remove it or for it to expire. However, I've called a number of fivers to myself, because I either want them to be done by an experienced fivist, or because I'm thinking of saving them for an event or something. So if there's a fiver you want to do that's not uncalled, but not published, email me about it. I may be able to let you have it, or I can tell you when it's currently set to expire back to the uncalled list. The main point of the uncalled list is to tell you of fivers that are definitely available to everyone, but that doesn't mean they represent every fiver available. Q: You do realize you switched from third-person to first-person during the course of this FAQ, right? Again? Darnit! Q: Waitaminute! What did you mean when you said "Yes and no" to the question about 5MSV being open to submission? Well, in my capacity as section head of a currently airing series, I five all the new episodes that come out for the show, so that means that anything past season 4.5 is unavailable. In fact, fiving the current episodes is how I started this job. I originally started fiving the episodes for the Trek BBS's Scifi forum and that grew into this. Q: Do you actually like Smallville? I have something of a love-hate relationship with the show. It has its moments (and when it has them, it's normally very good), but often it's dumb, and I try to reflect that in my fiver. Hence the way freak-of-the-week villains are referred to as Evil Mwahaha Villain instead of getting an actual name. Q: Do I have to write my Smallville fivers like you write yours? Heck no. Your fivers are your fivers. Write them however you want. As section head, I won't care how you treat the show or its elements or anything else if you've got a good, funny fiver. |
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