#rank heresy writing competition
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Works reveal
In which the works written for the February "Old Man Yaoi" competiton works unveiled!
By the Book was written by @levichouphys a Hades/Jafar Disney fic
Fishing by @smallcatwoman, a Charlie/Billy fic
thunderstruck by @heyob, a House/Wilson fic
Additionally, @theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin and @therealvinelle updated their co-written fic The Man Who Would Be King with chapters fitting the competition theme.
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After reading one of yours and Muffins Twilight updates I always start looking for similar fics (sadly I hardly ever find them) so if you haven't had yet the chance to read it I recommend you and also to the people reading the blog that suffer like me waiting for an update because now they can not unsee the Truth but can't find anything but fluff content: "And then there were none" is from a Halloween challenge
... you'll notice that this fic is anonymous and written for the Rank Heresy writing competition. A competition @theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin and I participated in.
In fact, we cowrote our entry.
So... yes.
Sorry, anon.
We're very impressed by your dedication to finding similar fics.
#i can't believe this#i laughed so hard getting this anon#congrats anon#the carnivorous muffin#my fic#the carnivorous muffin fic#and then there were none#rank heresy writing competitions
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I was looking through your rank heresy collection on ao3 and noticed a bloodborne fic in there. Have you played bloodborne? If so, what do you think about it?
Anon's referring to the Rank Heresy collection on Ao3.
Oh, oh anon, this is beautiful.
So, the Rank Heresy collection serves two purposes. The first is recommendations from myself and @therealvinelle as we got tired of having to copy and paste links all the time when people asked.
The other is for the writing competitions on the Rank Heresy discord which are generated from deliberately terrible prompts. (I cannot underscore them enough, the point is to be utterly awful). Some are written by myself and @therealvinelle, others are written by other participants.
Long story short, I've never played Bloodborne and I have no idea what it's remotely about.
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SEO on a shoestring budget: What small business owners can do to win
30-second summary:
There is a common and long-held belief that getting results from SEO takes at least six months. How true is that?
SEO can be costly and requires big dollars and a huge team to succeed. Should you ever compete with the biggies at all?
SEO is highly technical, changes from time to time with Google algorithm updates, hence, making it unpredictable.
This piece answers those questions in detail and further debunks two common myths regarding the time it takes to get results from SEO and the unpredictable nature of SEO. It is, in sum, about how small businesses can play and win in the big league with SEO on a budget.
Pretty much everything you think you know about SEO today will be out of date tomorrow. This makes the online world an exceptionally volatile environment, where big fishes swallow the small ones.
In spite of this, many small businesses with a small budget for SEO are finding their feet in the online marketing world. How are they doing it?
Research and experience have shown that domain age, numerous (quality) backlinks, and quality content are among the competitive advantages of businesses that are dominating the online marketing world.
And given that getting these things cost time and money, they present a formidable entry barrier to small business owners who want to get into the SEO game with a small budget.
For small business owners with little budget for SEO, chances are their website is relatively new, they do not have a budget for backlink building and even the job of creating content for their websites rests entirely on them.
Before you turn away from SEO, remember the classic of Ryan Holiday,
“The Obstacle is the Way.”
The last decade is replete with stories of how savvy business owners found their ways to go face to face with the giants and, sometimes, defeat them.
The online world is not very different in that aspect. If you can follow the following steps, Internet marketing success, against all odds, can be made-to-order.
In this guide, I will show you what small businesses are doing to defy the stereotype and make SEO success on a shoestring budget, in a relatively short time.
1. The low-hanging fruit strategy
If you have been tinkering around with SEO for a while, you’ve probably heard of the term “long-tail keyword”.
Long-tail keywords refer to the specific keywords searchers are likely to use when they are close to making a purchase online.
To put this in perspective, here is an example.
If you want to start a blog on how to start a blog, for example, chances are you will not get found on Google given that the key phrase is too broad.
But if you break this down a little bit further and try to rank for “How to Start a Blog for Free,” your chances of ranking high on SERPs become brighter because you are targeting a fraction of the audience of the first key phrase.
Another example is, if you are selling shoes, keywords like “shoes” are short-tail keywords, and trying to rank for them means you are probably going to be competing against Amazon and Gucci.
You don’t want to melt away like a snowflake under the sun, do you?
But if you try narrowing it down to more specific keywords such as “mens shoes,” or “best holiday shoes,” you have a better chance of getting to number one on Google SERPs for this kind of keywords.
I ran the word “shoe” on a keyword research website. Here is what the result looks like:
The number in that red shape refers to the level of organic competition of that keyword, otherwise known as Keyword Difficulty (KD).
While the keyword “shoe” has a very high traffic potential, you do not have the wherewithal to weather the cutthroat competition of that field.
Now, look at the image below.
You can see that another keyword “men’s shoe” KD is a little above 32. That is your long-tail keyword and anything that falls into that category.
When you look at the number of organic traffic, you’d find that you can receive up to 38,000 monthly organic traffic for that keyword. For a small business owner with a limited budget for SEO like you, this is not too bad.
All you need to do now is to find as many of these long-tail keywords as possible and use them to plan your content calendar.
Now that you have found the low-hanging fruits, what is it that you are supposed to do with them?
Follow through with the next step.
2. Keyword research
This sounds obvious, or like something you have just done, but wait a moment.
Now let’s take one of our short-tail keywords and plug it back to the keyword finder and see what we’ve got.
As you can see, even under the keyword “mens shoe,” we still find potential keywords that you can place strategically under your post and rank for or use to develop an independent blog post.
That is why it makes sense to do thorough keyword research to further see what other keywords you can place in your blog post for your major keyword and rank for as well.
While it is advisable these days to keep every single blog post focused around one keyword, having two major keywords to rank for in a single blog post is not a bad idea, according to Hubspot.
Well, on certain occasions, I have seen a single blog post that ranks for multiple keywords.
3. Write in-depth blog posts
According to a 2016 research, the average blog posts that rank number one on Google has about 1,900 words.
In the past, what it takes to rank on Google is a string of keywords. In other words, keyword stuffing WAS all it took.
Not anymore. Thin content was one of the primary targets of Google’s Panda. For a post to rank on Google, it is well understood that thoroughness is a sine qua non.
Posts that make it to the number one position on Google are in-depth and full of trusted sources. But do not mistake a long post for an in-depth post.
An in-depth post proffers value — every single word in it.
Embedding posts with visuals such as videos, infographics, and photos might mean additional advantages to boot.
While there is no denying that relevancy is what matters, most posts that meet the standard of relevancy required to please searchers are the long ones that offer more than vague answers.
And of all people, a little unknown business owner who wants to do SEO on a small budget needs to offer all the value she can.
4. Keyword related and non-keyword related on-site SEO
The bedrock of your on-site SEO efforts is your content which, I believe, we have discussed as incisive as possible.
However, on-site SEO involves more. Much more.
Let’s look at the most important things you need to pay attention to in your on-site SEO efforts.
5. Keyword-rich content
You know we talked about keyword research earlier in this post. But when I say keyword-rich, I do not intend “keyword-stuffed.”
Assuming you’ve now found the keyword around which you want to base your blog post, it is time to use this keyword strategically in your writing to tell Google what the post stands for.
Lucky for you, this doesn’t have to be much of a struggle if you are using WordPress. All you need to do is install Yoast SEO on your dashboard and it will help guide you in writing a keyword-driven article.
6. Mobile-friendly web page
Do I even need to mention that? Nearly 60 percent of searches made online are now from mobile devices. And that Google continues to change its algorithm to suit this trend in search method is telling enough.
Optimize your site for mobile-friendliness and you are on your way to a better ranking on Google. This article gives you clear steps as to how you can achieve a mobile optimized site.
7. Page load speed
When Google announced their Google Mobile-First Index, they further made it clear that site speed has become a ranking factor. Several findings have since shown that this is true.
If you are going to reap the benefits of your SEO efforts, then your site speed is something you must pay attention to.
How, then, do you increase your site speed? Ways abound, and some of these ways can be dauntingly technical.
So, if you are doing SEO on a small budget and, like me, you suck at coding, I will advise you to allocate a huge part of your lean budget for the technical aspects.
I will, nonetheless, tell you what it takes and my recommendation for you as someone who is doing SEO on a shoestring budget.
8. Minifying CSS, Javascript, and HTML
Our websites are constituted of some little tiny ugly codes (Sorry, programmers, they are ugly to us).
Those little tiny objects are made up of unintelligible commas, spaces, numbers and all sorts of nebulous characters.
If you are a techie, then it wouldn’t cost you much to remove unused code, code comments, unnecessary spaces as well as other characters.
But for the uninitiated like me, you’d stand a better chance if you outsource this to professional web designers.
9. Image optimization
Image is another element that can take a lot of space and clutter up your website, thereby making the loading time a bit slower than is desirable.
As much as visuals are important for a successful blog post, keep in mind that the average image recommended for a blog post is 1200 x 628 pixels.
To optimize your image for SEO, you want to do it in such a way that it doesn’t compromise the quality of your image neither does it impact your SEO in a negative way.
There are many image optimization tools online. Look them up here.
10. URL structure
When it comes to SEO, you cannot afford to have a URL that looks like an HTML code.
An SEO-friendly URL must be one that’s easy to read for search engines and gives humans the idea of what they are about to click.
Research has shown that URLs are among the key elements searchers consider before they click on a link.
In the olden Internet days, it would not be too hard to see URLs that look like specks of dirt, but such URLs these days are but condemnable heresies in the sight of lord Google.
Take a look at the illustration below to get an idea of what you should and should not do when it comes to URLs.
Source: Neil Patel
Here is a checklist of what you should have in your URL
Use your keywords in your URL: For example, if you have a blog post about where to find the best dog food, your URL should look like this: www.blog.com/where-to-find-best-dog-food. You can see it looks almost like a complete sentence. Here is an example from a blog I wrote about podcast hosting platforms: https://contentmarketingprofit.com/10-best-podcast-hosting-sites-and-everything-you-need-to-succeed/. Notice how it gives you an idea of what you are about to click.
Keep it short and simple: Keeping it below 60 characters has always been the recommendation. Short and sweet doesn’t mean you should overdo it though. Always try not to go beyond 60 characters.
Hyphens are better used as a separator in a URL than an underscore according to Google.
11. Link internally (with caution)
Linking to your other blog posts from a relating one has become a rule of thumb in writing blog posts.
And in case you don’t know, it isn’t just a fad designed to make you look like a professional blogger.
Its benefits include delivering link juice to other pages, showing Google the relevancy of posts to one another, making it easy for Google bots to crawl and index your pages and of course, keeping humans on your site longer.
But the “with caution” above means, when cross-linking internally, be wary of using too much exact-match anchor text in your links.
If you do, Google might think it’s an attempt to manipulate and penalize you for it.
12. Copy: Good, relevant, great copy
Yes, I know I’m supposed to write that as “metadata” here, but metadata isn’t particularly a ranking factor.
It’s just a clicking factor which, indirectly, makes it a ranking factor.
What you put in your metadata matters. Bear in mind that aside from your title, your metadata is what tells users whether to click or scroll down.
As such, do your best to ensure that your metadata hits home. Create short, concise, quality descriptions that convey value to the user searching the internet for either information, purchase, feedback, or any other reason.
13. Go for the big link
It’s been many years since Google started using link signals as an important ranking factor. Links are still the most important external factor in SEO, and they aren’t about to go away anytime soon.
Now it’s time to start building backlinks, first, for your site as a whole, and, second, for your money pages in particular.
While this looks like a straightforward venture, be careful and observe the following rules in building links or you might run into a problem.
But before we go into the rules, let me quickly take you back to our first step in this journey.
Remember I clearly stated that you must find the long-tail keywords around which you are going to build your blog posts? Now, it’s time to hit your competitors where they are most vulnerable.
What this means is that for every least competitive keyword you find, your competitor has the least number of backlinks going to that.
Analyze their link profile using tools like Ahrefs and try outdoing them with backlinks on those ones.
To put it this plain text, if your shoe-selling competitor has a blog post about “mens shoe” just like you do, and the number of backlinks that goes into that is twenty, to outrank them at that one on Google, all you need is twenty-one backlinks to a similar blog post on your site.
If you have nailed your on-page SEO already, consider this a silver bullet on outsmarting your competitor.
Now let’s quickly run through some link building best practices.
A. Quality, not quantity
If you go after low domain authority sites in the interest of haste, you risk hurting your SEO.
While it’s not necessary to only go after sites with the highest domain authority, learn to go after sites with great domain authority. Anything from 60 DA and above is okay.
But even sites with 40 DA are also useful so long as they aren’t too many. Your best chances though lie in getting sites with 60+ DA by your side.
B. Have a healthy mix of anchor text
For someone who wants to rank a site for a keyword such as podcast platforms, for instance, you may be tempted to want to build a link profile with those two keywords: podcast platforms.
But I guarantee you that there is no faster and surefire way to get your site penalized. Google suspects an unnatural amount of links with the same anchor text pointing to the same source.
If you must build a link profile, then have some diversified anchor texts.
C. Avoid black hat link-building no matter the glamour
And I can’t stress that enough.
There are many link vendors on the Internet who sell you on quick generic links that will get you penalized rather than rank.
The struggle to build links can be overwhelming for someone on a little budget and the lures are all there. But patience to do the right thing never gets too much. Don’t be in a haste to rank a rank that will truncate your well-planned efforts.
Even if those generic links work for you in the short term, what it will take for all these gains to disappear is Google penalizing you.
Avoid buying links, PBNs, as well as all other kinds of black hat link building that are being touted on the Internet.
In the end, build a huge and healthy link profile around your low-hanging fruits. This can be achieved by becoming a guest post rockstar and willing to withstand a lot of virulent rejections.
Or better still, create likeable assets in terms of valuable articles that bloggers may naturally want to refer to.
Need an example? Link Building for SEO: The Definitive Guide
Another thing that will help you in your link building campaign is bloggers outreach. Heaps of articles exist on the Internet teaching you how to go about these things in detail.
As you build this up, your domain authority significantly improves, arming you with the experience and money to go big and eventually share the field with your big competitors.
And from the very beginning, the purpose of this blog post is to teach you how to start small and go big with a thin budget for SEO.
It is a piece of article written with a simple philosophical understanding in mind, that is; sometimes, you have to take one step back to potentially take two forward.
Conclusion
If you’ve been searching online to seek answers for how long it takes to rank on Google, you might have come across articles that saunter a little bit around and end up saying six months.
That might have been true in the past but not anymore. Whenever Google updates her algorithm, there will be traffic losses and gains. Most times, these are not due to correctness or error from your end.
But SEO has lived long enough to have fundamentals and so far as we know, the things identified in this blog post have stayed long enough to become hard and fast rules in search ranking efforts.
If there is anything we’ve learned in the past decade, it is a simple truth that big dollars are not always the sole winning ingredient — anymore.
Will, innovation, grit, unceasing creativity, and a touch of luck are all you sometimes need to win. When you plan to use some SEO marketing for your business but you have a little budget, you aren’t expected to exit the stage.
You can still win, but only if you try.
Ali Faagba is a copywriter, content marketer, and a tech freelance writer. He’s been featured in Entrepreneur, Thrive Global, and others. You can reach him on Twitter @contentmints.
The post SEO on a shoestring budget: What small business owners can do to win appeared first on Search Engine Watch.
from Digital Marketing News https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2020/06/04/seo-on-a-shoestring-budget-what-small-business-owners-can-do-to-win/
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Paul McCartney. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons
The greatest musical talent of all time just turned 75 on June 18th and is still going strong. Sir James Paul McCartney who was knighted in 1997 for his many musical contributions to the world of song has left a legacy no one will ever equal! How could anyone declare Sir Paul greater than Elvis? Such heresy! Here’s the argument for…..
* The Beatles were declared by Billboard as the number one artists
of all time spanning 1958-2015.
* As to the top ten singles spanning the same timeframe, “Hey Jude”
ranked #10 remaining number one for 9 weeks.
* Sir Paul tied for first with 3 songs on BB’s Top 100 Hits All time.
* The Beatles placed “20” #1 singles; The King had 18.
* A 21 time Grammy Award winner.
* Has written/co-written 32 No. 1 songs on Billboard’s Hot 100
* Saving the best for last (answers below), the Fab Four placed 12
singles in Billboard’s Top 100 the week of April 4, 1964 including
the Top Five!
We could continue for days with more documented evidence, but anyone looking at this subject realistically would have a difficult time making a counter argument. What the Beatles and Paul (later as a solo artist) accomplished is staggering to comprehend. The lesson we can learn from this success story is the following equation: Extraordinary Success = Persistence, Practice, Passion, Natural Talent, Competitive Spirit and Creativity all combined into one focus. The Beatles hardly got discouraged exploring all options until fame and fortune happened. The rest is history. Now for the 12 singles that changed the musical landscape forever…….
1. “Can’t Buy Me Love”
2. “Twist and Shout”
3. “She Loves You”
4. “I Want to Hold Your Hand”
5. “Please Please Me”
31. “I Saw Her Standing There”
41. “From Me to You”
46. “Do You Want to Know A Secret”
58. ” All My Loving”
59. “You Can’t Do That”
68. “Roll Over Beethoven”
79. “Thank You Girl”
And if the above is not convincing enough, Paul’s “Yesterday ” was covered by some 2200 artists! We rest our case.
Steve Vassallo is a HottyToddy.com contributor. Steve writes on Ole Miss athletics, Oxford business, politics and other subjects. He is an Ole Miss grad and former radio announcer for the basketball team. Currently, Steve is a highly successful leader in the real estate business who lives in Oxford with his wife Rosie. You can contact Steve at [email protected] or call him at 985-852-7745.
Follow HottyToddy.com on Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat @hottytoddynews. Like its Facebook page: If You Love Oxford and Ole Miss…
The post When I’m Sixty-Four…Please, Please Me…Make That 75 appeared first on HottyToddy.com.
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Christianity Solidified By Apologetics In The Early Days Of The Church
In the Church today, a debate rages over the relationship of philosophy and theology to one another. Some scholarly believers as epitomized by Norman Geisler argue that, since this world is God's world, both can be used to understand Creation if each of these disciplines are approached from a Bibliocentric perspective. The other side of the debate contends that, since theology contains God's revelation to mankind, philosophy at best merely repeats the understanding of theology or at worst actively undermines theology by enshrining human reason as the ultimate standard.
This debate extends back to the earliest days of the Church. Living in the Hellenistic world awash with numerous philosophies, mystery cults, and state religions, the Church quite early on had to address these realities.
Basing their approach on Paul's Mars Hill missionary efforts in Acts 17, early Christians advocating the value of philosophy pointed out that philosophy could be used as a point of contact with the unbeliever when both philosophy and theology concurred on certain matters. For example, Paul was able to win the attention of some Stoics because of the similarities between Christianity and that particular philosophy. Justin Martyr, who went from being a Stoic to an Aristotelian to a Pythagorean to a Platonist, ultimately settled upon being a Christian because he categorized the faith as the true philosophy.
The second approach emphasized its own Pauline justification as well by invoking I Corinthians 1 where in the passage the world's wisdom is categorized as foolishness. Elsewhere, Colossians 2:8 says, “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception.” Those adhering to this approach noted how philosophy often bred heresy and unbelief.
A number of Church Fathers favorably disposed towards philosophy harbored questionable beliefs often linked to Platonism. For example, Origen of Alexandria believed that Satan was not beyond redemption since the Devil is a spirit not unlike a run of the mill human being (Gonzalez, 80). Such a perspective was often derived from the Platonic view that God was a nondescript entity that did not create the universe from nothing and did not personally care for individual human beings. Yet God as revealed through Scripture and incarnated in Jesus Christ is known personally by His followers and cares when even the tiniest sparrow falls to the ground.
When viewed from a certain light, both of these approaches relating philosophy and theology possessed merit. Each agreed regarding the centrality of God's revelation of Jesus Christ and on the need for salvation. Those appreciating philosophy were correct in pointing out that all truth is God's truth and that segments of truth can be used to introduce the lost to the source of all truth. Those leery of philosophy were correct in pointing out the danger the discipline would wreak if left unchecked. The descendants of the early Church walking the Earth would do well to consider both of these positions.
I Peter 3:15 commands the Christian to provide an answer for the hope within. Many apologists and theologians interpret this as giving a response to objections and inaccuracies raised by the unbeliever. In the process, the potential exists to bring a substantial number into the faith by highlighting those points of commonality shared between the faith and the most profound insights that human thought have to offer.
Realizing that a percentage of the persecution befalling the Church was the result of inaccurate rumors and incorrect assumptions, the early Apologists set out to set the record straight in a manner that would make a Madison Avenue public relations firm proud. The Apologists answered head on the charges leveled against Christianity and turned them against their pagan adversaries. When accused of orgies and incest through misunderstandings as to the nature of the love feast and the practice of calling fellow believers “brother” or “sister”, the Apologists explained what these terms meant and the pointed out that the pagans themselves committed such debaucheries as exhibited by certain Dionysian rites. (Gonzalez, 50). Accused of atheism for believing in what the Romans considered god and for not believing in the sanctioned state pantheon, Polycarp at his trial was ordered by the judge to vocally proclaim, “Out with atheists.” Polycarp theatrically gestured towards the assembled crowd and declared, “Yes, out with the atheists (Gonzalez, 45).”
Having deflected some of the criticism, the Apologists sought to win Classical civilization by showing that the insights and accomplishments achieved by that particular cultural tradition were not necessarily antithetical to Christian belief in and of itself. Justin Martyr argued that all knowledge stemmed from the universal reason of the Logos manifested in the person of Jesus Christ. Reason was to the Greek what revelation was to the Hebrew in terms of the basis of each culture's epistemological foundation. Justin in fact characterized Christianity as true philosophy.
The Apologists found themselves in an era hostile to the claims of Christianity. Yet they were willing to proclaim the message that the hostile forces arrayed against the Church needed to hear. Though it has not yet come to the same point in our society where believers are being executed for their faith, the contemporary Church needs to emulate this example before such a state of affairs occurs once more.
Over the course of its early history, the Church faced numerous threats. Some of these such as the hostile Roman and Jewish authorities came from without. Those claiming to come from within the Church's own ranks as embodied by the heresies of Gnosticism and Marcionism were as equally dangerous in their own particular manners.
Gnosticism was the name given to a number of related sects claiming they possessed knowledge beyond that held by the Church and the ordinary believer. Gnosticism was in fact a blending of Platonism Judaism, Zoroastrian, and Christian beliefs (Chadwick, 35). A number of these beliefs held by Gnosticism put the movement at odds with the Christian faith.
First among these was that only the spiritual was good and that matter was in fact evil. This teaching manifested itself in two primary ways. Some Gnostics engaged in extreme ascetic practices that ignored basic bodily needs. Other Gnostics invoked their disregard for the material as an excuse for debauched and licentious practices since they insisted bodily actions bore no impact upon one's spiritual well-being.
Beyond this, Gnostics possessed several faulty notions regarding Christ. For example, many Gnostics held that Christ did not actually possess a human body but rather merely appeared to have one. Such a claim would make Christ a liar and thus unworthy of worship.
In Luke 24:39, Christ Himself says, “See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself: touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” If Christ did not have an actual material body, why would He go to such a length in deceiving His associates into thinking He had one? In regards to Gnostic conceptions of salvation, it was not enough to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Instead, one needed to be initiated into the inner circle of hidden knowledge in order to obtain the passwords needed to ascend to higher levels of enlightened existence.
The second heresy faced by the early Church was Marcionism, named for its founder Marcion. Marcion believed that the God of the Old Testament who created the physical world and who was worshiped by the Jews was not God the Father of Jesus (Chadwick, 39). The higher God sent Jesus into the world to correct the evil wrought by the maniacal Jehovah. To do away with physical procreation which nauseated him, Marcion argued that Christ stepped onto the world stage as a fully grown individual.
Marcion then took it upon himself to establish a canon of sacred writings suitable to the teachings of his sect. Having enunciated this antipathy for the Old Testament God, Marcion rejected that particular portion of Scripture. Of what came to be known as the New Testament, Marcion accepted only the Gospel of Luke and Paul's Epistles. Even these documents did not escape his editor's pen as Marcion proceeded to expunge these texts of their Old Testament quotes and allusions which he claimed had been placed there as Jewish propaganda.
Gnosticism and Marcionism presented powerful threats to the fledgling Christian Church. Fortunately, the Church was able to rally around the faith elaborated in Scripture and empowered by the Holy Spirit to keep these false doctrines at bay.
As the Church grew in number and influence, it was not long before those assembling under its banner or claiming to speak on behalf of its divine founder began promoting and squabbling over differing theological beliefs and interpretations. A number of these were either highly controversial or even blatantly aberrant.
Montanism was a reaction against Marcion and Gnostic theologies. Both Gnosticism and Marcionism sought to undermine the more conventional literal interpretation of Scripture by allegorizing these as many Gnostics had done or by denying the authenticity of such outright as Marcion had done. Each sect also denied essential doctrines such as Christ's virgin birth or physical incarnation.
Montanus along with Prisca and Maximilla were alleged to have prophesied under direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit against as what was classified as “...the Gnostic elimination of the eschatological expectation (Chadwick, 52). “ In many ways, Montanism proved as divisive as its Gnostic and Marcion competition. Many congregations in Asia Minor split, with the church at Thyatira remaining Montanist for nearly a century (Chadwick, 52).
The Montanist movement even appealed to theologians of considerable reputation such as Tertullian. Tertullian was originally attracted to the movement's rigorous ethics and spiritual vigor. However, even he grew weary of the innovation after a fashion because of the movement's failure to deliver on its promise of a new era marked by increased accessibility to the power of the Holy Spirit and its promise of a Christian life surpassing even that enjoyed by the Apostles themselves (Gonzalez, 76).
Such enthusiasm could not be sustained indefinitely. Even if it could, Montanism was not even necessarily that good of an idea since it was itself based upon questionable theological assumptions. For example, Montanists claimed that those doubting the veracity of their prophetic utterances were guilty of blaspheming the Holy Spirit, the greatest offense one could commit in violation of Scripture. Hippolytus pointed out in reference to the Montanist emphasis on supernatural manifestations that these were not the greatest miracle that an individual could experience. But rather that honor was reserved for the occasion of their own individual conversion (Chadwick, 53). The orthodox response to Gnosticism and Marcionism was not to be found in the fits of ecstasy and seeming irrationalism as offered by Montanism but rather in more powerful tools that the Church would find at its disposal.
It would probably not be an exaggeration to say that the average Christian thinks that the Bible plopped down from Heaven complete with leather binding and the words of Christ conveniently highlighted in red. However, the process by which the Church came to accept this gift from God, particular in regards to the books of the New Testament, was a gradual process fraught with a certain degree of controversy along the way.
In response to the Marcion and Gnostic denial of certain Gospels and portions of the Epistles embodied by Marcion's acceptance of only the Gospel of Luke and his removal of Paul's Old Testament quotations as Jewish propaganda, the Church felt that it needed to formalize which writings were binding as divinely inspired. Since Jesus accepted the Old Testament as divinely inspired, so would the Church. Therefore, most of the debate arose surrounding what post-Old Testament writings would be accepted into the corpus of holy writ.
According to Justo Gonzalez in “The Story Of Christianity: The Early Church To The Dawn Of The Reformation”, the first works accepted by the Church were the Gospels. Instead of being discouraged by alleged discrepancies between the exacting details of the Gospels, orthodox Christians pointed out how the considerable agreement between these documents undermined Gnostic claims to the secret knowledge as found in the sect's preferred text the Gospel of Saint Thomas (Gonzalez 63). The next set of works accepted by the Church included the Pauline Epistles and the Book of Acts.
The greatest debate centered around the texts found towards the end of what Christians categorize as the New Testament. Debate ensued over II Peter, Hebrews, James, II John, III John, Jude, and Revelation. Councils were convened at Hipporegiaus in 393, at Carthage in 397, and the Council convened in 419 was under the leadership of none other than Augustine. It was the purpose of these councils to identify which books stood out as having been authored under divine inspiration. However, this process of consensus did not always end the dispute as was the case regarding the Book of Revelation. Though accepted by the third century, its inspiration was questioned after Constantine's conversion because of the book's harsh words regarding tyrannical government and worldliness but this concern subsided by the second half of the fourth century (Gonzalez, 63).
Though the New Testament did not plop down fully formed from Heaven into the hands of Billy Graham or John Paul II, the Church can rest assured as to this work's divine authenticity because even to this very day there are few things to which all Christians agree. For example, Dispensationalists and Covenant theologians seldom agree on the specifics of Scripture's eschatological chronology, but both will agree upon the supremacy of the Lord proclaimed within its pages and the value of each inspired word to the salvation of mankind to this very day.
Faced with challenges such as Gnosticism and Marcionism, the Church formulated several weapons to be used against these kinds of heresies, the New Testament canon being the most powerful tool at the disposal of the Church. However, the Church also possessed a number of other supplementary weapons to be used in a supportive role in the realm of intellectual and spiritual confrontation.
One of these tools used by the Church came to be known as the Apostle's Creed. This symbol of faith was used to identify true believers since those reciting it with understanding were enunciating orthodox doctrine. This creed spoke to the subject of Jesus as God's Son, of the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the historicity of Christ's incarnation under the rule of Pontius Pilate and other foundational Christian doctrines with which assorted competing sects found themselves at variance.
The second used in the Church's arsenal was the Rule of Faith. Very much akin to the Apostle's Creed, the Rule of Faith provided a brief summation of key doctrinal ideas such as those enunciated in the Creed such as the Creation, the Incarnation, and the Ascension. Tertullian found the Rule of Faith easier to use than the Scripture itself since the heretics interpreted Scripture through the lens of their pre-established theological preferences while not accepting the doctrines articulated within the Rule (Chadwick, 45).
The third method employed by the Church to protect the faith was the notion of Apostolic Succession. According to the idea of Apostolic Succession, Christ passed his teaching authority on to the Apostles who in turn handed orthodox teachings over to their successors who eventually handed down this heritage throughout history in an unbroken chain. This idea was formulated to combat Gnostic claims of secret knowledge either passed down outside the established Apostolic channels or lost until rediscovered by the Gnostic adepts of succeeding generations.
Each of these tools used by the Church did possess considerable influence yet could not surpass the power of the New Testament Canon. Both the Apostle's Creed and the Rule of Faith were derived from the teachings of Scripture and were merely tools used to summarize the greater body of work contained within the pages of the New Testament. Apostolic Succession was only of use if those invoking it were willing to adhere to the truth of the Gospel proclaimed by the Apostles and embraced by the early Church. Succeeding centuries would provide the results of what would happen when the traditions of men were given nearly the same weight as the revelation of God.
I Corinthians 12:28 and Ephesians 4:11 list the office and gift of teaching as one of the primary missions within the structure of the Church. It has often been the duty of those taking up the mantle of teaching to fight the doctrinal errors of the day and to prepare their respective congregations to face challenges in the society at large. Two individuals taking up this role in the early church included Irenaeus of Lyon and Tertulian of Carthage.
Iraeneus was born in Asia Minor around AD 130. Eventually Irenaeus migrated to Lyon in southern France where he became presbyter and ultimately bishop after Photinus died under persecution. A disciple of Polycarp, Irenaeus had a pastor's heart in that his greatest interest was in teaching his congregation to live the Christian life and comprehend doctrine. As such, he did not engage in significant philosophical speculation (Gonzalez, 68).
That does not mean, though, that Irenaeus was an intellectual slouch. In “Demonstrations of the Apostolic Faith” and “Against Heresies”, Irenaeus played the role of an ancient Hank Hanegraaff or Norman Geisler by refuting the doctrinal errors of his day --- namely Gnosticism --- and by instructing his readers in essential Christian belief. Taking the shepherd role of a pastor to heart, Irenaeus saw God as a shepherd lovingly leading his flock of humanity to the culmination of history (Gonzalez, 68).
According to Irenaues, humanity was created as children eventually to takeits place as the judges of angels who themselves would help mankind in reaching the point of maturity like a tutor teaching a prince to one day take his place of rulership. Man is also to be taught by God's Word and Holy Spirit. Though history is now marked by sin, there would have been a history anyway (though one not quite as tragic as that now filling the world's libraries). In the drama of history, Israel is the instrument through which God's Word and Spirit reach out to all of mankind with an offer of eternal communion in the form of Jesus Christ.
The second teacher to be discussed is Tertullian of Carthage. In certain respects, Tertullian was the Francis Schaeffer or Ravi Zacharias of his day, utilizing logic and argument to reveal the intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy of his opponents. For example, Tertullian used his legal and rhetorical training to expose the inherent inconsistency of Trajan's policy regarding Christianity: don't actively flush out believers but indeed prosecute them if they happen to get caught (Gonzalez, 74).
Tertullian believed Christianity represented all truth and to seek truth apart from it through Classical culture was pointless at best and idolatry at worst. This sentiment was summarized by his famous aphorism asking what does Athens have to do with Jerusalem. Despite his wit and penetrating logic, Tertullian veered from the straight and narrow off into the Montantist movement which often emphasized alleged fits of the Spirit over the application of logic in addressing other rising heresies.
Perhaps Tertullian's greatest contribution was his understanding of the Trinity. His understanding was formulated in response to Modalism (the belief that the names of “Father”, “Son”, and “Holy Spirit” signify the modes or roles of a unitary God rather than distinctive individuals). Tertullian said of the Trinity that the Godhead consists of one substance and three persons with Christ as the Savior being that distinct person possessing two natures (Gonzalez, 77). And to top off this formidable existence of intellectual accomplishment, Tertullian is honored as the father of Western theology for being among the first to use Latin rather than Greek in his writings.
It is often easy to look down upon teachers and apologists for their application of the intellect in approaching the things of the spirit. However, it cannot be denied that these thinkers play a pivotal role in strengthening the faith of believers and in introducing the faith to a hostile and unbelieving world.
By Frederick Meekins
Chadwick, Henry. “The Early Church.” 1967.
Gonzalez, Justo. “The Story Of Christianity (Vol. 1): The Early Church To The Dawn Of The Reformation. Harper Collins Publishers, 1984.
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March writing competition
At last, the new challenge has arrived!
Poke fun at your own nation or culture!
Interpret this however you like, just make sure the roast is one that would make your countrymen or community be moderately upset but not able to say anything because it's completely true.
Submitted works are to be placed in the challenge linked here before the 1st of April.
Feel free to contact us through the Rank Heresy ask box for questions about the challenge.
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Works reveal
Old man yaoi month has ended, and with that we proudly present our three (four) entries!
New works posted:
By the book - Disney - Restauant AU, Jafar's sous chef makes a mistake.
Fishing - Twilight - Charlie and Billy have their fishing trips.
thunderstruck - House M.D. - Wilson learns something new about House.
The participants are @smallcatwoman, @levichouphys, and @hey-ob.
Already published works updated to have old man yaoi:
The Man Who Would Be King
#rank heresy#rank heresy writing competition#rank heresy writing competitions#fic rec#twilight fic rec#disney fic rec#house fic rec
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Works reveal
It's Novermber 1st, and time to reveal the works written for @melgbi and @likorys-shimenawa's October prompt, which was soulmates!
One work was contributed:
Amulette d'amour
The contributors were:
The Carnivorous Muffin and Vinelle co-writing.
My god, who could possibly have written the fic.
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November 2023 writing competition
The November 2023 writing competition has been decided by @kailink (who I for some reason can't tag)!
The challenge is: Write a fic in a style you don't usually use.
Examples include first/second person vs. third person, third person limited vs. omniscient vs. objective, epistolary, screenplay, poem, fairytale, etc..
Entries are to be posted here, and they will be revealed on December 1st.
Happy writing!
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Works reveal
For the May writing competition (to be found here), we have the following six contributors:
Kailink
Sage-the-mage
Smallcatwoman
Vinelle and The Carnivorous Muffin
Unknown
Unknown
(Dear unknown people: please DM Vinelle!)
Here are the works:
Interview with the Spider
The Unwriting of Malory Thyme
Nineteen Eighty
Father of the Groom
Matchmaker
Verdict
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May 2023 writing competition
A new month, a new challenge!
This month's challenge will be:
Write a scene.
That is to say, write a oneshot that fulfils the following criteria:
The characters stay in the same location
It's a snapshot of time
In other words, write a moment fulfilling the classical definition of a scene.
If you want to make it more difficult for yourself, you can use the French stage definition: a change of scene is marked by a change of the people on stage, that is to say, your scene begins with character A entering the room and character B leaving it.
The deadline is June 1st, 11 AM GMT+1 (a very loose deadline I'll probably forget to enforce and you can submit after that, you just won't be in the original reveal post) and revealed anonymously, with the author reveal happening on June 14th.
Submit your entries here!
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Works reveal
For the February writing competition (to be found here) we have the following five contributors:
MyCrypticWings
SmallCatWoman
The Carnivorous Muffin
Vinelle
These are the works:
A Statue of Iron and Clay
Even More Violent Delights
For the Love of Alice
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bacchanals
Perfect Strawberry
To make the guessing as difficult as possible, we will only tell you this: some contributions have been cowritten and some contributors have submitted multiple work.
Happy guessing!
#february 2023 writing competition#rank heresy writing competition#writing competitions#works reveal
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Works that were posted or updated during the May challenge
Better late than never, the tumblr post announcing the reveals for May.
Interview with the Spider by @theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin and @therealvinelle
The Unwriting of Malory Thyme by DemonQueenSage
Nineteen Eighty by Kalink
Father of the Groom by Manic_Pixie_Dream_Lesbo
Matchmaker by smallcatwoman
Verdict by smallcatwoman
Good work everybody, hope you had fun guessing!
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Introducing monthly writing competitions
As some may have picked up on, there have been monthly writing competitions happening on the Rank Heresy discord server. This has been incredibly fun, only we realized recently there wasn't actually a reason for this competition to be discord only. So, we thought we'd expand the monthly writing competitions to tumblr.
How it works
On the first of every month, the entries from the previous month are revealed, and a new prompt is given. A new Ao3 collection where all works are unrevealed (meaning the fic can't be read, it's just "Mystery work") and anonymous will be created, and participants upload their fics to said collection, while letting us know by DM that you are participating (as collection owners can't see your work or your pen name until it's revealed and de-anonymized).
On the first of the next month all entries are revealed (and a new prompt given, because it's the circle of life), and a list of participants revealed. It remains anonymous, however, so that people can have fun trying to guess at how wrote what.
On the fourteenth of every month the fics are then de-anonymized.
Rules
The fic can be of any type or length, so long as it fills the prompt.
Multi-chapter fics are allowed, and they don't need to be finished! The important thing is that what you submit fills the prompt, however many chapters is required for that and regardless of whether the fic is finished. (If this is confusing: the rule exists so that you can be inspired by a prompt to make a bigger fic out of it, but you won't have to pen the whole thing in a month.)
Co-writing is allowed! Just let us know when you sign up, so we can list you and your co-writer together.
Deadlines are soft in this game. Very soft. If you're not ready on the first of the month, never fear, take your time and submit when you're ready. The deadline exists so the competitions wouldn't drag out.
There are no winners of these competitors. We may boldly claim "the winner will be the author whose entry is the most (blank)!" or such, but there has never been a winner nor will there ever be one (unless only one person/team participates).
If only one person/team participates, there will be no point to guessing and the fic will be de-anonymized right away.
A central point of the early competitions that was lost along the way but deserves a mention all the same, is that we wanted to produce the worst of the worst, to give readers that godawful feeling of having gone through a time portal and ended up on fanfiction.net in 2008. The prompts given may reflect this.
Here are all the past writing competition collections, and where new ones will appear.
Feel free to ask questions, or join us on discord (DM for invite) for more writing competition related things.
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For February’s challenge, what levels of yaoi are acceptable? Like is low key hand holding or other vibes fine?
Would it make the fangirls squeal if their blorbos did it?
In other words, if your old men exist on the planet and you can argue it's yaoi then yes, we're good.
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