Discussion Main / MrFixit

Why is this "Mr". Fix it? It doesn't seem to be a men/boys character only specific trope...

Feels like a rename is in order?

Also given that

(1) the trope name seems inaccurate as it doesn't seem to be a gender specific trope

(2) We already have a convention of naming gender specific tropes as something gender specific in this nature (Mr. Fanservice, Ms. fanservice, etc). So the fact that this is named in a similar manner but is not gender specific, from my pov is rather confusing given the usual conventions?

(3) there is a pre-existing historical sexist trope against women/girls doing engineering/fix it work in the first place

(4) Given the existence of (3), using 'Mr' - specific to men and boys to refer to a trope regarding non gender specific of the topic of engineering where women and girls were (and to some extent still are) historically discriminated against comes off, to put it gently, as massive Unfortunate Implications. To put it baldly, it comes off as gross and sexist on first glance. Gendered names for general tropes sometimes happen on tvtropes but usually they are referencing a piece of media as the trope namer/characteristics of that trope in a humorous way- this does not fall into that convention so it stands out.

(5) unfortunate implications aside the naming is straight up confusing. Is this trope about only men/boys who often macgyver or fix up the things? Is this trope about The Character that does all the Mechanical and fixing work in the media work? And their gender doesn't matter? Is this trope normally a man? Why is this a "Mister"? It's never addressed. The rest of tvtropes usually has the trope named gendered if it is a gendered trope, or will address it in the description. So what's going on here? Is this our trope for the 'character that fixes things'? The examples seem to fall under 'character that fixes things' so that's what I'm taking as my premise. Is it important that the character is a man/boy, enough that that should be the name of this trope?

Anyway, something feels very off here? How can it be fixed up, any ideas?

(Seems we're busy in the trope repair shop, let's make a thread when we can)

The bit about Leeron makes me think I should try reviving my One-Man Industrial Revolution YKTTW.