thinking about the episode where kathryn janeway tells an alien that while other kids were outside making friends, she was indoors doing quadratic equations. (Sacred Ground, fwiw). she does this to imply she was never very adventurous or friendly.
I read that woman’s biography (Mosaic) and her autobiography (The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway), and listened to her later tell her own crew of various adventures like sneaking out of the house and walking miles in a thunderstorm after losing a tennis match.
woman almost died cave diving because her friends chickened out and she went with a boy instead. got a commendation for sneaking off campus because she saved an old woman’s life in the process. built a replica of da vinci’s flying machine so she could pilot it onto the roof of the dean’s office.
Kathryn Janeway is a scientist in the way Indiana Jones is an archaeologist. undoubtedly qualified, but there’s gonna be a caper about it.
rather than view her statement as an outright lie or a bad characterization by the writers, however, the funnier option is that she thinks of herself as rather introverted, withdrawn, and nerdy. That she is so deep in the trenches of her own mental landscape that she doesn’t realize that other people view her pursuit of science and diplomacy as acts of extreme charismatic recklessness.
which makes it doubly hilarious that jock Kathryn Janeway, who destroys the entire ship at Velocity and routinely heads her own away missions and has single-handedly reclaimed her ship from hostile aliens multiple times, looks at herself and thinks: yeah, I’m very boring.
She also tells Tal Celes that she was the queen of all nighters at the Academy. She drops those "sneaking out" lines like it's nothing and means nothing, while dropping the moments about studying and putting her all into things like it's the definition of who she is. And we see her even do it in "Relatively" when she is all "I've been buried in Voyagers schematics for the last three months". We see her throughout the series doing it honestly - just burying herself in work and being prepared.
It's an intricate part of who she is and it's why when Celes is all "haha everything natural for you, you never would have to spend all night studying" Kathryn "I spend every moment I'm not reckless risking my life buried in books and schematics" Janeway immediately went "yeah, I was known as the queen of all nighters at the academy. Couldn't find me without my course material and a coffee hold up in my quarters"
In her mind it's normal because she's been doing this since she could walk (I swear one of the books has her sitting with her dad as a kid going over math - for fun - during one of his visits home). Balancing studies, work, and relaxing isn't really something she mastered - least if she did it derailed in the DQ.
For me it's a mix of hilarious and then also a sort of "why is it reckless when she does it but Picard got considered extremely over-confident. Like, he pulls reckless self sacrificing behavior or you know rams his ship into another and it's "this is why they consider be over-confident" but when Janeway does it suddenly it's "this is why they call me reckless" and that could play into it as well. Obviously, while that boils down to other things of the time most likely ... If we branch that into culture of Starfleet constantly pulling a "they are so over confident" with the Kirk/Picard/Janeway style behaviors but then when Janeway does it the Admiralty is immediately "why are you reckless?" ..... Her focus on how she studies and over achieves vs "hahaha I also go on adventures" makes a lot of sense.
Not to go into character analysis I just been noticing the way she gets refered to vs other characters while doing this watch. And going from Voyager to the Nemesis movie immediately after was jarring in a way. Because Voyager is constantly "haha she's reckless" and then Nemesis immediately is all "considers Picard overly confident" when ... The two engage in the same behaviors (like yes I say Janeway is closest of that period to being like Kirk but Picard is right there too - it's written into TOS with the cowboy diplomacy line by Spock). Just has made me think that she may deliberately focus on some stories more than others as a result. Because she drops those lines on the bridge about her adventures like it's no big deal, everyone always like "wait what?" While Tuvok and Chakotay are just there like "we knew this story but didn't expect the lore drop on the bridge Kathryn"
