J.S. Harrold
jsharrold.bsky.social
J.S. Harrold
@jsharrold.bsky.social
Writer, Fencer, Trying his best
Pinned
I wrote a short story! And I actually published it this time! If you like mystery, magic, sword fights, and robots, then you might like this.

www.scribblehub.com/series/13352...
The Broken Circle
A deadly monster attack shakes the village of Road Narrows, prompting a traveling sorcerer to investigate and put down the beast, but things may not be as they first seem. Old magics lie nascent and w...
www.scribblehub.com
Reposted by J.S. Harrold
the mind of the artist
November 19, 2025 at 2:43 AM
Reposted by J.S. Harrold
there is precious little that can actually distract me once i really get into an art groove. but uh. yeah that’ll do it.
July 13, 2025 at 4:42 AM
Just to reiterate in light of recent events: fascists hold hypocrisy as a virtue. That their rules apply to some and not to others is, to them, a mark of strength. Do not waste your breath calling it out. It is a trap. They will have you sleepwalking into dystopia while you play rhetorical games.
July 4, 2025 at 3:39 AM
Reposted by J.S. Harrold
the Army: "our armored vehicles are usually push-button started because in an active warzone you want to minimize things that can go wrong"

Curtis Yarvin: "what if shooting an M16 worked like trading Bitcoin."
March 22, 2025 at 4:35 AM
I can't say I'm sure what the root of my mental health problems is, but carrying around a box that all but exclusively tells me bad news probably isn't doing a ton to help.
January 27, 2025 at 7:36 AM
Reposted by J.S. Harrold
We failed to stop fascism's rise. Now it's dancing about on the White House lawn. I don't know how to fix all this but I do know that the shit we've been doing won't get us out of this one.

shatterzone.substack.com/p/we-failed-...
We failed to stop the rise of fascism. What comes next?
How to navigate the future without a map.
shatterzone.substack.com
January 21, 2025 at 4:05 AM
Nothing like discovering a big ol' typo right on the back cover blurb of your own book. Ah, well. One or two was bound to slip through. I'll be able to fix it in March. Until then, book? I never wrote a book. What're you talking about?
January 19, 2025 at 9:25 AM
Here's a fun creative exercise I like to do: Take something mundane and describe it in the most flowery, dramatic, metaphorical language you can muster up. It's good practice for setting a scene, and it makes the world feel just that littlest bit more magical.
January 16, 2025 at 5:49 PM
Just fulfilled a lifelong dream by picking up my first book at my local bookstore. Feeling all warm and fuzzy about it.

Big thanks to @stephenking.bsky.social and a whole lotta dead guys for the endless inspiration. Can't wait to see where this story goes!
January 14, 2025 at 12:37 AM
Not a week goes by where I don't think "Richard Proenneke had the right idea."
honestly just ban all social media, then destroy the power substations. light all the cars on fire. return to the woods. die of pneumonia. live the good life.
January 11, 2025 at 5:55 PM
It's been a hot minute since I sat down for a painting project like this, but I think it's coming out alright so far.
January 7, 2025 at 6:18 AM
Genuinely it feels like a decade-plus of online content revolving around harsh, often angry criticism of perceived flaws in media has made people afraid to create art for fear of doing it "wrong." Making bad art has been ludicrously built up to be near a sin rather than a necessity of art itself.
You gotta make art that sucks in order to make art that fucks
January 5, 2025 at 9:20 AM
January 2, 2025 at 2:56 AM
Some food for thought on metaphors and similes: When comparing something to something else, think of what connections are implied other than the surface-level aspects. Saying that someone's eyes are as black as night strikes entirely differently than saying they are black as oil. Aside from 1/2
January 1, 2025 at 11:23 PM
Reposted by J.S. Harrold
Had the urge to draw the giant albino mutant penguins from the H.P. Lovecraft novella, AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS!

It’s one of my favourites by him. I love the idea of explorers stumbling into an uncanny environment that is unknown and desolate, and piecing together a mystery.
December 30, 2024 at 10:53 PM
I think a lot of writers fall into the trap of thinking of folklore creatures too similarly to the D&D monster manual. The myths of actual cultures often defy categorization as we think of it today. A being may be called a spirit, a fairy, an elf, or a demon and be very much all the same thing.
December 29, 2024 at 9:27 AM
Hopefully this can ease some fantasy writer's mind out there: You don't need to have a whole world with millennia of history mapped out before you begin on your story, or even before you end it. It's okay to let your world form into being alongside your plot. The Hobbit was a bedtime story, ya know?
December 29, 2024 at 9:18 AM
I don't think it's terribly novel to suggest that physical spaces can have character, can *be* characters themselves. Anyone who's felt the love of a childhood home or the suspicious regard of a lamp-lit city street can tell you that firsthand. But have you ever been in a place that hated you? 1/?
December 28, 2024 at 6:57 AM
Reposted by J.S. Harrold
snowball fight, italy, ca. 1400
December 23, 2024 at 7:07 PM
There is no more terrible a feeling than Regret. Not the wistful kind that makes you wonder what could have been, but the sharp, instantaneous kind where your knees feel weak and your blood freezes in your veins and you know that you would sell your soul in a heartbeat if it only meant you could 1/2
December 23, 2024 at 3:19 AM
One of my favorite things about watercolor painting is getting to enjoy drinking the paint water afterwards like a sommelier. Yum yum. Takes like inspiration and creative expression, with notes of heavy metal poisoning.
December 21, 2024 at 9:12 AM
Been thinking a lot about the appeal of post-apocalyptic stories, and I think I may have figured it out, at least for me. I think it's at least in part the assertion that, even after the world we know is ripped from our hands, there will still be life and moments of triumph and stories to tell. 1/2
December 21, 2024 at 2:48 AM
I wrote a short story! And I actually published it this time! If you like mystery, magic, sword fights, and robots, then you might like this.

www.scribblehub.com/series/13352...
The Broken Circle
A deadly monster attack shakes the village of Road Narrows, prompting a traveling sorcerer to investigate and put down the beast, but things may not be as they first seem. Old magics lie nascent and w...
www.scribblehub.com
December 20, 2024 at 10:32 PM