Sam Vimes/Vetinari is another
Usually the American bias is to make infrastructure guy a by-the-book bureaucrat the hero must bypass to maverick the problem with a hero’s journey
Often cast as a middle-aged woman instead of guy when the intent is to really make them bad
If you consider yourself a good infrastructure thinker and ops person, across different categories of systems and processes, what’s your top tip for being good at it?
As low-level habit as possible. For eg “keep work spaces clean” or “inspect everything once a week”
Main character: “Yolo, let’s cut the blue wire!”
Cuts wire, Red light starts blinking, alarm goes off. Countdown timer skips ahead from one hour to 30 seconds
Infrastructure guy: “I have been preparing for this moment my whole life”
Star Trek’s Scotty, Q from James Bond, and Merlin.
They do seem to fit your orthogonal character. They all come across as being in their own story and the hero is only their side quest.
Main characters write autobiographies
Infrastructure people write memoirs
That’s how you know what you are… based on what your story sounds like
I’m neither
only in multi-generational family sagas the infrastructure guy can become the main character, ... patriarch or matriarch energy-not super active but turns out was right all along.