Forum › The Girl With a Mirrored Heart discussion

UranusAndNeptuneAreJustCousins
joined Sep 6, 2015

Honestly, I can see her being bullied for this. I mean, it is even outright presented that her condition was merely an excuse for others to single her out. There is no actual reasoning behind it, like there is none behind basically all bullying. If anything, what makes this unrealistic is that we are not shown the bullying getting ten times worse after she started being openly gay with the other girl, or that the other girl was not bullied herself merely for approaching the outcast.

joined Mar 8, 2016

It's a myth, btw, that the heart is located on the side. Its actually right under the sternum in the middle, because that's the most protected area. The reason you feel the beat stronger on the left is because of the position and function of the chambers and arteries.

UranusAndNeptuneAreJustCousins
joined Sep 6, 2015

It's a myth, btw, that the heart is located on the side. Its actually right under the sternum in the middle, because that's the most protected area. The reason you feel the beat stronger on the left is because of the position and function of the chambers and arteries.

...since when was this considered a myth?? The heart is positioned asymmetrically, with only about a third of it being actually behind the sternum. Two thirds are on the left side.

last edited at Oct 28, 2020 10:01AM

Image
joined Feb 23, 2016

How would they even know she has that condition

I was thinking the same thing, but then i remember some schools in japan do physical Checks in their school, So they probably saw her then.

last edited at Oct 28, 2020 10:21AM

Kaga
joined Apr 23, 2016

i think they referred to it as a myth bc people tend to think it's more to the left than it is. i was gonna mention the artist seems to think this too, but they also mixed up left and right so they weren't going for anatomical correctness anyhow lol

also hol'up how can they tell her organs are inverted and why does it matter

wait nvm i'm a doof, they did that bc the mc's is inverted. so yeah, the hearts are more right and more left than it would be

last edited at Oct 28, 2020 10:37AM

Ihaveseenthelight
joined May 28, 2013

Okay but can we talk about the butt plug lamp on page 3?

Murcielago_reiko
joined Dec 9, 2019

This sounds like a Grey's Anatomy or House MD subplot.
(Wait, actually, Grey's Anatomy has this in their (https://greysanatomy.fandom.com/wiki/Thriller) "Thriller" episode.)

last edited at Oct 28, 2020 10:56AM

Rosmontis
Nevrilicious Scans
joined Jun 5, 2015

Kirin posted:

CW: Majorly depressing shit, suicide.

There was this one episode of a show called Shigofumi that I watched recently. This one guy blogs on a forum about a guy in his class getting bullied and laughs about it with all the other posters. Then he realizes that the guy being bullied is one of the posters too. The victim recognizes him and asks him to help at school, but the guy just tells him that he can't do anything, and the victim eventually kills himself out of sheer despair.

Then they reveal that the bullies saw the victim talking to the original guy for like five seconds, and decided that since he was the victim's 'friend', he ought to be next in line for bullying. The guy being bullied is handsome, popular, gets good grades and largely well-liked, but nobody wants to piss the bully clique off, so they ostracize him. He starts blogging on the same forum, and realizes that no one on the Internet or in real life cares. Someone's gotta be the scapegoat, and no one wants to take his place.

The episode basically wraps up with the bullies making the original guy walk around on the edge of a roof, which has a high chance of getting him killed. He realizes that there's no way to run, no way to back out, because they'll be hounding him for every second of the rest of his school life. If he complies, they'll keep coming up with new ways to torture him. If he gets used to it, they'll escalate the punishments to get a reaction. The guy realizes that there's no way out, snaps, and stabs one of the bullies with a screwdriver. They put him in juvie and the implication is that his life is ruined, because Japan ostracizes the heck out of anyone with a minor criminal record, so a murderer would never be able to get a job or achieve anything resembling a stable, ordinary life. But even though he's got no future, his actions are presented as justified, because there was no hope for him anyway, so at least he got some catharsis. He realized that relying on logic or negotiation or authority figures wouldn't do anything, because nobody wanted to get involved with him and would just turn a blind eye. He's already seen what happened to the former victim, and decides to kill instead of being killed. Basically, he becomes an animal, because there was no place for him in an apathetic society.

It really drove in how absolutely hellish bullying can be, particularly in Japan, where it seems like ritualised abuse. There's no perfect solution, no ray of hope, no saviors- just a choice between two different kinds of hell. It was pretty bleak, but I honestly couldn't call it unrealistic, because I've seen people in similar situations and read stories about how they just... broke. Bullying is a problem that's pretty hard to solve, seeing as it stems from immature kids channeling the worst parts of human nature, but that's exactly why people need to take every possible effort to keep an eye out and combat it.

Shigofumi! But yea, that's the reason why bullying is so horrible. Bullies don't need a reason to bully someone and they'll just find anything to justify it. And it's especially nasty in Japan, because of their culture of shame and everything revolving around being useful to society. Kids from young age are forced to study hard with expectations to go to best school and find great job they'll spend their entire life in working for country and being good, productive citizens. Individuality is forbidden as per "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down" proverb. On top of all that since middle school kids are expected to go to cram schools. It doesn't matter if you actually do good in school or not, if you didn't go to cram school, people will look down on you as lazy and/or arrogant. So kids are incredibly stressed so then they find a way to relief that stress and so someone in class is picked for bullying. Teachers turn blind eye to it because 1. they know it will make rest of kids behave and it's better overall for class (society) as a whole and 2. because risking police or some authorities learning about it, would mean that media/society would learn about it tarnishing the good name of school and ruining its reputation and they can't allowed that to happen. So yes, when you're being bullied unless you do something extreme to scare bullies off it will never end. And even in countries that it's not as extreme as in Japan it's still bs, because no matter what you do, bullies at best will just get slap on the hands and then they'll just go back to bullying you even harder in "revenge" and "payback" for what you did to them. Talking to teachers or authorities and lecturing bullies does nothing. And they never hurt you enough for it to become a problem. But if you fight back and hurt them, then it'll be you who gets punished or in best case scenario you both will have to take responsibility equally. Society just doesn't give a fuck about people being bullied and you have no tools to fight it without also cutting yourself from society. You're doing everything you can to survive and yet you're being see as the one who went overboard and judged for it.

last edited at Oct 28, 2020 11:13AM

Logo-ubuntu_st_no%c2%ae-white-hex
joined Apr 23, 2013

Team Medical Dragon, the shonen about surgeons, had a couple of these cases to spice things up. Great series.

Lojsdbe
joined Sep 16, 2019

How would they even know she has that condition

I might be reading this wrong, but the way I kinda read into it, it seemed almost like she was self-conscious about her condition from the get-go (which might have been the result of bullying, although that is never really made clear). This caused her to shut people off, thus making it easy for them to exclude/bully her.

I was thinking the same thing, but then i remember some schools in japan do physical Checks in their school, So they probably saw her then.

AFAIK mirrored organs don’t leave any sort of outward physical marks, so they would have to have looked at her medical records to find that out. It’s possible that she just let it slip to someone at one point, and the rumor just spread around. It’s also possible that they don’t know, and she’s simply getting picked on because she’s a bit more dour/loner-like than everyone else (partially due to her self-consciousness regarding her condition).

last edited at Oct 28, 2020 11:54AM

Dynasty%20profile%20v13
joined Apr 27, 2018

Weird thing to bully someone over.
But regardless, this is super sweet. I'm glad there's a happy end for her.

Well generally people dislike other people that aren't normal...

Stretch%20full
joined Jun 13, 2012

Does those bullies have X-ray eyes?

10807fb9dea2e14573bdced1ea4c45e9
joined Aug 19, 2019

You know, this actually makes me kind of wonder just how much shit one has to go through to get to a point where you're perfectly fine and even happy to ruin another human beings life possibly forever by making them miserable, I'm no saint but even I wouldn't be able to bring myself to do that to my worst enemies, of course some kids are simply born devils but others are kind of molded into these monsters, not excusing their actions but it really makes you see how shit life can be.

9286787ab50153acb27cd03b385edb3d949d719e0b569799723637ee189d1f4b_1-1
joined Aug 14, 2020

Who bullies someone cause their organs are flipped? Seems pretty lazy. Like c'mon, y'all couldn't find anyone else. Bullies be slacking these days.

joined Jan 22, 2017

Yo flag this for self-harm, I didn’t need to see cutting tonight.
It is flagged for "violence", i assume for that one image (and maybe the bullying, albeit that is depicted abstractly.)

If "self-harm" is a tag here, that might be better since the "violence" flag backfired a bit for me; I didn't fully read that one panel and so kept expecting a horrific, soul-crushing, violent twist coming on the final page...

Sweetness followed

last edited at Jan 31, 2021 12:02PM

joined Jan 22, 2017

Does those bullies have X-ray eyes?

Actually, some very specific details in Pandacorya's art jumped out to me on just that first page that immediately rendered the character as looking "different".

Oda's posture and the hang of her clothes, also the way the panels were directed, there were details that made the character design seem opposite of typical manga. (It almost looked like that slight off-feeling look you get from flipped manga to me; I wonder if the artist drew the panels in the layout and then reversed some of the art?)

It's hard for me to see what rang up to me as different again going back to it a second time (which itself is a bit of a poetic reaction), but I felt the art was intentionally askew even before I read the first panel. I felt it before she said it. Anybody else feel that?

last edited at Jan 31, 2021 12:01PM

Screenshot_277
joined Aug 31, 2017

if i have a condition like that, it would be the first thing i would say at the beginning of any conversation!
like: "yo, i have mirrored guts lol", anyone in the world would be interested after that

62342532_p4_3
joined May 27, 2015

Does those bullies have X-ray eyes?

Actually, I thought there was plenty in Pandacorya's art on just that first page that immediately rendered the character as looking "different".

Oda's posture and the hang of her clothes, also the way the panels were directed, there were details that made the character design seem opposite of typical manga. (It almost looked like that slight off-feeling look you get from flipped manga to me; I wonder if the artist drew the panels in the layout and then reversed some of the art?)

It's hard for me to see what rang up to me as different again going back to it a second time (which itself is a bit of a poetic reaction), but I felt the art was intentionally askew even before I read the first panel. Anybody else feel that?

In another one-shot by Pandacorya, "I Went to a Lesbian Brothel and My Teacher Was There", the main character had her hair parted the other way compared to the one here. Same slightly grim expression on the first page too.

joined Mar 8, 2016

...since when was this considered a myth?? The heart is positioned asymmetrically, with only about a third of it being actually behind the sternum. Two thirds are on the left side.

Yeah, no.

Web MD: https://www.webmd.com/heart/picture-of-the-heart

"The heart is a muscular organ about the size of a fist, located just behind and slightly left of the breastbone. The heart pumps blood through the network of arteries and veins called the cardiovascular system."

University of Michigan: https://healthblog.uofmhealth.org/heart-health/anatomy-of-a-human-heart

"Located between the lungs in the middle of the chest, the heart pumps blood through the network of arteries and veins known as the cardiovascular system. It pushes blood to the body’s organs, tissues and cells. "

Quora answer from a cardiologist: https://www.quora.com/If-our-heart-is-in-the-middle-why-do-we-feel-the-heartbeat-on-the-left

"The question is correct that most of the heart lies in the center of the chest. Only a variable sized portion protrudes to the left.

So if most of the heart is in the center, then why isn’t the hearbeat felt in the center of the chest?

There are two reason you don’t (typically) feel a heart beat in the center of the chest:

  1. The sternum is a thick bony structure that decreases the transmission of force of the heart beating. (There actually is vibration there - it is just too small typically to feel. You can hear the vibrations with a stethoscope however.)

  2. The Right Ventricle pumps less blood. The Right Ventricle is under the sternum and (typically) in the center of the chest beats less vigorously than the Left Ventricle because it is only pumping blood through the lungs as opposed to the entire body.

The reason you feel the heart beat to the left is that a portion of the left ventricle lies against the skin between the rib cage on the left side - and effectively “bounces” contraction waves against that soft area. The result is a “PMI” - point of maximal impulse where the heart beat can most be felt. As the heart enlarges, the PMI moves further and further laterally, away from the center. The PMI can sometimes be used to diagnose abnormal heart enlargement."

Youtube video explainer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idkPch61aMw

last edited at Oct 28, 2020 4:02PM

Yuu
joined Mar 28, 2015

I was afraid it would end up in drama. But no.

So people can have mirrored organs huh, I didn't know that was a thing. You really do learn something new everyday!

Right! I immediately googled this and it happens to 1 out of 10,000 people. Born with their organs on the opposite side :O

UranusAndNeptuneAreJustCousins
joined Sep 6, 2015

@Tamahime Well, you got me to dust off my Waldeyer for the first time in half a decade (and I did not even click on those links, lmao). And yeah, I have to correct myself. One third of the heart is to the right of the median plane, two thirds are to the left of it. So yes, it is primarily located on the left side. The mistake I made was to confuse the median plane and its neat divide into thirds with the sternum itself, which actually has width and expands equally to both sides of said plane (for some reason, I placed the right third of the heart under the sternum, but then treated the left two thirds as being left of the sternum, which only one of them is).

So if talking about the sternum rather than the median plane, roughly two thirds of the heart are behind the breastbone (rather than only one third), and the remaining third protrudes under left ribs.

last edited at Oct 28, 2020 5:12PM

joined Jan 3, 2020

Re: earlier comments - I have always wondered why one's heartbeat is on the left side, whereas anxiety, happiness, love, and a few other emotions are felt directly in the center of the chest. I've looked for the answer a few times but never really found one (there's virtually no information out there on 'how' and 'where' we feel emotions for some reason outside of a single study that gets quoted everywhere...).

I think the answer is because emotions are felt in areas based on neurological paths, and it has little to do with blood flow. Still not sure why the center of the chest is the place those feelings end up because there isn't anything important there even from a neurological perspective, though.

last edited at Oct 28, 2020 5:17PM

joined Jun 12, 2019

Yeah how would they know that she has that condition.. also bullying her bc of it is so :/

joined Mar 8, 2016

Re: earlier comments - I have always wondered why one's heartbeat is on the left side, whereas anxiety, happiness, love, and a few other emotions are felt directly in the center of the chest. I've looked for the answer a few times but never really found one (there's virtually no information out there on 'how' and 'where' we feel emotions for some reason outside of a single study that gets quoted everywhere...).

I think the answer is because emotions are felt in areas based on neurological paths, and it has little to do with blood flow. Still not sure why the center of the chest is the place those feelings end up because there isn't anything important there even from a neurological perspective, though.

Do you actually feel those things in the physical location of your heart? I can't say I have. I think that arose out of poetry rather than any kind of common physical sensation.

There is however an accumulating body of research about the neurological role of your stomach, and, in particular, how the flora there affect it. I have definitely felt gastrointestinal changes based on intense emotions.

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