Violet's Home for Wayward Thoughts

Their mother picked up after them. They were not required to take plates the kitchen or do the dishes or anything like that.

My mother, who would tell you she is for equality, came home one day, sighed at the mess of dirty dishes scattered about, and said, "Gayle, help me pick up."

"Those aren't my dishes," I said. "I picked up my dishes."

My mother sighed again. "Just help me pick up."

"No," I said again. "I didn't make that fucking mess."

She never approached my brothers and said, "Boys, in this house, you take your dishes to the kitchen." She did not tell our dad, "Hey, tell the boys they need to pick up after themselves."

It was, "Gayle, pick up the dishes."

And when I refused because it was not my fucking mess, I got lectured about being difficult.

See also: My brothers--in a classic dick-move of all siblings--figured out they could pop the lock on the bathroom door and throw it open, and I would freak out because I was in the shower and trying to get five fucking minutes of peace.

When I tell people this, they always, ALWAYS, assume I have sisters. They say shit like “oh I’d love to do that, but I have boys” and when I tell them I only have brothers, “oh you must have eaten a lot of burned dinners then!”

Like, no. To both of those statements. Sure we burned stuff when we were younger but we all learned to cook before 13, that was just the age where it became a scheduled chore. You know who did burn everything? My MOM. My Boomer dad did all the cooking because my mum didn’t want to and he was the one to help when we needed it, though my mum did help with prep/chopping things.

Fast forward to now, middle brother can make the best risotto I’ve ever had and my youngest brother is vegan and makes almost all his own meals because his partner isn’t and he doesn’t expect her to make two meals so he can eat.

The worst part of this social conditioning is how bullshit it is. I know this is not ingrained, I know people are teaching their sons to be assholes, and I look at my middle brother in his immaculate apartment with tasteful decor that he picked out himself and I look at my youngest brother who does all the clothes shopping for him and his partner because she struggles with it and it makes me want to just start biting people.

(My first proper attempt at writing a romance story. I hope you enjoy it. ❤️)

______________________________

The first time Riley met June, she laughed so hard she snorted coffee through her nose.

It was an undignified beginning for what would become the happiest relationship either of them had ever known.

"Oh gods," June wheezed between giggles, handing over a handful of napkins. "Please tell me you're keeping that in."

"I'm pretending it never happened."

"I watched it happen."

"You're a terrible witness."

"And yet, somehow, you're asking me out."

Riley blinked.

"...I wasn't."

June smiled.

"Pity."

She paused just long enough to let Riley panic.

"...I was."

______________________________

Six months later, they were sprawled across Riley's apartment floor, assembling miniature figures neither of them had gotten around to painting.

June held up a tiny dragon.

"Why do you own so many of these?"

"They're cool."

"You have... seventy-three."

"They're different."

"They're all dragons."

"They have personalities."

June laughed.

"My ex used to say exactly that."

Riley looked up from her paintbrush.

"...Your ex sounded like a nerd."

"The biggest."

"I would've bullied them."

"Oh, absolutely."

Neither of them noticed Riley subconsciously arranging the paint pots in perfect colour order.

Or that June absentmindedly lined up all the brushes by size.

Their third wheel, Avery, noticed.

Avery noticed everything.

She'd known both of them years ago, before either had transitioned, before either had changed names, wardrobes, voices, or learned how to smile without forcing it.

She also knew that the dragon currently sitting in June's hand had originally belonged to...

No...

She wasn't thinking about that.

She valued her sanity.

"You two are disgustingly cute," Avery muttered.

June grinned.

"We know."

"I was talking about the miniatures."

______________________________

One rainy Friday, armed with takeaway noodles and two glasses of cheap wine, the conversation drifted somewhere neither of them had expected.

"My ex was kind of awful," June admitted.

Riley groaned dramatically.

"Oh thank goodness. Mine too."

June sat up.

"Really?"

"Oh, really."

It became a competition.

"My ex left mugs everywhere."

Riley pointed dramatically.

"Mine too!"

"They'd start seventeen hobbies and finish three."

Riley gasped.

"Mine bought a bread maker."

June stared.

"...Mine bought a cheese-making kit."

There was a brief awkward silence.

"Maybe we dated siblings."

"Maybe."

For a few seconds, neither of them spoke

Across the room, Avery made a noise that sounded suspiciously like someone choking on a spring roll.

Neither looked over.

"They'd hum while fixing things," June continued thoughtfully. "The same four notes, every single time."

Without even realizing she was doing it, Riley softly began humming the little tune that always seemed to escape whenever she was relaxed around June. It was quiet, almost absent-minded, the kind of melody that simply happened rather than something she chose to sing.

June's eyes lit up.

"Like that."

Riley blinked. "Like what?"

"That little tune you always hum." June smiled warmly. "It's almost exactly like my ex's... except yours is cuter."

Riley felt warmth creep into her cheeks.

"I... I only really hum when I'm comfortable."

June tilted her head, unable to suppress the grin spreading across her face.

"I guess that explains why you're always humming around me."

"I do not."

"You absolutely do."

"I don't."

"You've been humming for the last thirty seconds."

Riley opened her mouth to argue, only to realize she was, in fact, still quietly humming.

"...Oh."

June laughed, the kind that crinkled the corners of her eyes.

"It's adorable."

"Y-you're adorable..." Riley muttered before she could stop herself.

The words hung in the air.

June's face immediately flushed a brilliant shade of crimson.

"...You think I'm adorable?"

Riley buried her face in her hands.

"I walked right into that one."

A bashful silence settled between them before Riley peeked through her fingers.

"I mean it, though. I think your smile's adorable... and I think it's sweet that you noticed."

June smiled so brightly it made Riley's heart skip.

"...I don't even realize I'm humming," Riley admitted. "It's just... a reflex, I guess. When I feel safe. Or when I'm around someone I..." She fidgeted with the sleeve of her hoodie. "...someone I really like."

For a heartbeat, neither of them spoke.

June slowly lowered her own face into her hands, trying and failing to hide just how red she'd become.

Across the room, Avery looked up from her book, took one long sip of her drink, and sighed with theatrical exhaustion.

"You two," she said, shaking her head, "are unbelievably gay."

Neither Riley nor June denied it. They were both far too busy smiling at each other.

Avery wanted to say something.

She really, really did.

Every fiber of her being screamed to blurt out, "*Girls, your exes are literally sitting across from each other."*

But every time she opened her mouth...

"...She used to organize paint bottles by colour," June said fondly.

Riley snorted. "Mine did that too. Gods, nerds are all the same."

Avery closed her mouth.

Not yet.

A few minutes later...

"Did your ex also make tea and then forget where they put it?"

"Constantly."

Avery inhaled.

"Actually, I—"

"Mine always left little dragons on random shelves."

"Mine too!"

Avery exhaled.

"...Never mind."

At this point, she wasn't sure if she was preserving a beautiful romance...

...or witnessing the universe commit the funniest practical joke it had ever conceived.

She settled for taking another sip of her drink.

"I'm either the world's greatest friend," she muttered under her breath, "or I'm enabling the most elaborate slow-motion train wreck in history."

______________________________

The revenge notebook started as a joke.

Operation Mild Inconvenience.

Rule One: Nothing illegal.

Rule Two: Nothing genuinely hurtful.

Rule Three: Maximum confusion.

"I think," Riley announced, "we replace every family photo with pictures of ducks."

June nodded solemnly.

"Excellent."

"You?"

"Hide tiny Bluetooth speakers around their house."

"What do they play?"

"Random goat noises."

Riley wiped tears from her eyes from laughing.

"You absolute menace."

"I know."

"Marry me."

June froze.

"...What?"

"What?"

"You just—"

"I..."

Riley turned bright red.

"I meant..."

June smiled softly.

"I know what you meant."

Avery watched them with the haunted, almost melancholic expression of someone watching two people unknowingly assemble a jigsaw puzzle upside down.

She knew the picture on the box.

They didn't.

They simply kept fitting the pieces together, smiling every time another one clicked into place, never realizing they were slowly rebuilding something they had once broken.

June said something that made Riley perk up instantly.

Avery smiled despite herself.

*You two still know exactly how to make each other light up*, she thought.

*You just don't know why anymore.*

June broke the comfortable silence, and Riley immediately looked up.

"...You know," June said softly, "I've always wondered what happened to my ex."

Riley was quiet for a moment before offering a small, thoughtful smile.

"...I hope they're doing better."

June blinked, caught off guard.

"...Really?"

Riley nodded.

"I was angry for a long time."

She glanced down for a moment before looking back at the woman beside her.

"But... people can change."

June's smile was bittersweet.

"...I hope mine did too."

Avery quietly excused herself and slipped away to the bathroom.

She wasn't laughing anymore.

She was crying.

Because she knew something they didn't.

The people they were talking about...

Had.

They just hadn't realized it yet.

______________________________

Three weeks later, Riley proposed properly to June.

June didn't even let her finish the question before saying yes.

______________________________

A week before the wedding, Riley was searching the attic for spare fairy lights when she stumbled across an old storage box tucked into the back corner.

Inside were faded photographs.

A concert ticket.

A tiny dragon miniature with chipped green paint.

"...Huh."

June wandered in a moment later, muttering to herself about ribbon colours before wrapping her arms around Riley's waist from behind.

"What'd you find?"

"I... don't actually know."

Together they sifted through the box.

At the bottom lay an old photograph.

June picked it up first.

A younger version of herself smiled back from the picture.

Standing beside her...

...was someone with an unmistakably familiar grin.

Riley froze.

June looked at Riley.

Then back at the photograph.

Then back to Riley again.

Silence.

"...No."

Riley swallowed.

"...No."

June looked closer.

The eyes.

The smile.

The way she leaned ever so slightly to one side.

"Oh my gods..."

Riley reached into another envelope.

Another photograph.

The same concert.

The same day.

The same two people.

Only now...

They knew exactly who they were looking at.

Neither of them spoke.

Neither of them moved.

Finally, June laughed.

Not because it was funny.

Because it was so utterly, impossibly absurd.

Riley started laughing too.

"Oh my gods..." she managed between breaths. "We've spent almost a year planning revenge against ourselves."

"And we almost replaced our own family photos with ducks."

"You wanted Bluetooth goat noises."

"They deserved Bluetooth goat noises."

"...We deserved Bluetooth goat noises."

The laughter slowly faded.

June looked down at the photograph again.

"I was awful to you."

Riley nodded.

"...Yeah."

"You were awful to me."

"...Yeah."

Another silence.

Not an angry one.

Just an honest one.

June reached out and took Riley's hand.

"But..."

She looked at the engagement ring.

"...I'd never do those things now."

Riley squeezed her fingers.

"I know."

"I don't even recognize that person anymore."

"I don't either."

Riley gently touched the old photograph with her thumb.

"I spent so long hating my ex..."

She looked up, meeting June's eyes.

"...that I never imagined she'd become the woman I wanted to marry."

Tears welled in June's eyes.

"I kept hoping my ex had changed."

She smiled through them.

"I didn't realize I'd already fallen in love with the proof."

Riley leaned forward until their foreheads touched.

"I don't love who you were."

"I love who you fought to become."

June smiled.

"And I'd choose this version of you..."

She kissed Riley softly.

"...every single time."

Outside the attic door, Avery had arrived to help decorate.

She heard the laughter.

She heard the crying.

She heard the kiss.

She smiled to herself.

Finally.

They'd turned the puzzle over.

And somehow...

Truncated text of tweet from MrPitBull, Mar 11, 2026:

She kept finding women in laboratory photographs from the 1800s. Then she read the published papers—and every single woman had vanished. Someone had erased them from history.

Yale University, 1969.

Margaret Rossiter was a graduate student studying the history of science. She was one of very few women in her program.

Every Friday afternoon, students and faculty gathered for beers and informal conversation. One week, Margaret asked a simple question: "Were there ever any women scientists?"

The faculty answered firmly: No.

Someone mentioned Marie Curie. The group dismissed it—her husband Pierre really deserved the credit.

Margaret didn't argue. But she also didn't believe them.

So she started looking.

She found a reference book called "American Men of Science"—essentially a Who's Who of scientific achievement. Despite the title, she was shocked to discover it contained entries about women. Botanists trained at Wellesley. Geologists from Vermont.

There were names. There were credentials. There were careers.

The professors had been wrong.

But Margaret's discovery was just the beginning. Because as she dug deeper into archives across the country, she found something far more disturbing.

Photograph after photograph showed women standing at laboratory benches, working with equipment, listed on research teams.

But when she read the published papers, the award citations, the official histories—those same women had disappeared. Their names were missing. Their contributions erased.

It wasn't random. It was systematic.

Women who designed experiments watched male colleagues publish results without giving them credit. Women whose discoveries were assigned to supervisors. Women listed in acknowledgments instead of as authors. Women passed over for awards that went to male collaborators who contributed far less.

Margaret realized she was witnessing a pattern that stretched across centuries.

Women had always been present in science. The record had simply pushed them aside.

She needed a name for what she was documenting.

In the early 1990s, she found it in the work of Matilda Joslyn Gage—a 19th-century suffragist who had written about this exact phenomenon in 1870.

In 1993, Margaret published a paper formally naming it: The Matilda Effect.

The term captured something that had been hidden in plain sight for generations. Once you knew the term, you saw it everywhere.

Her dissertation became a lifelong mission.

For more than 30 years, Margaret researched and wrote her landmark three-volume series: Women Scientists in America. She examined letters, institutional policies, individual careers. She gathered undeniable evidence that women in science had been consistently under-credited and structurally excluded.

Her work faced resistance. Many dismissed women's history as political rather than academic. Others insisted she was exaggerating.

Margaret didn't argue emotionally. She presented data. Documented cases. Patterns repeated across decades and institutions.

Eventually, the evidence became undeniable.

Her research helped restore recognition to scientists who had been erased:

Rosalind Franklin, whose X-ray work revealed DNA's structure—credit went to Watson and Crick.

Lise Meitner, who explained nuclear fission—omitted from the Nobel Prize.

Nettie Stevens, who discovered sex chromosomes—received little credit.

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, who discovered stars are made of hydrogen—initially dismissed.

And countless others whose names had nearly vanished.

Margaret changed the narrative. Science was no longer just the story of solitary male geniuses. It became a story of collaboration that included women who had been written out.

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

Anyway my friend had some not so nice teeth and during dinner the father of his fwb was like “you work where you work, you sleep with him and his teeth look like that? Get him an appointment.”and then bounced. So his fwb made him an appointment at the practice she managed and my friend ended up needing like 3k worth of dental work and his friend with benefits just gave it to him for free.