So, does Kara have favourites for anything? And how do Nia and Kelly deal with exactly how close Alex and Kara are?
There’s not a lot of jealousy to be honest. Each of them takes away something different from their relationships with each of the other three in the group. Kara and Nia have the shared experience of having powers and being aliens. Kelly and Alex both know what it’s like to be overshadowed by a sibling who needs more attention. Kelly and Nia both have the shared experience of being outsiders even within the LGBT community, even if it’s for different reasons. And so on. They each have their own shared experiences, and they also each have things they get from the specific relationships. Kara and Nia are just sappy and dopey and dorky and romantic and mushy together. Nia is Kara’s rom-com romance, and they both love it that way. Kelly and Alex are just low key. They love each other like crazy, but they especially love that the relationship is very low energy. They can just sit and be together and it’s enough. Kara and Alex are all fire and thunder and passion. They love each other so much it hurts, and sometimes its too much and they have to retreat to their respective corners, which is where Kelly and Nia come in, because they need those relationships to ground them and balance them. Kelly and Nia are about comfort and solace and processing. They go to each other to talk things out, and to deal with the things that way on them that they need to talk about, but don’t want to add to Kara and Alex’s burdens. Kara and Kelly is about healing and catharsis. Kelly isn’t Kara’s therapist as much as she is Kara’s confessor. Kara goes to Kelly for absolution of her sins. The moments of anger, jealousy, pettiness, spite. The days when she isn’t fast enough or powerful enough to save everybody. And Kelly comforts her and punishes her and forgives her for it. And Alex and Nia is oddly enough about the butch/femme dynamic. Kara and Kelly are both pretty good about playing the butch for Nia, but when she’s really feeling the dysphoria or needs reassurance about who she is, there’s nothing better for her than time with Alex, who always goes out of her way to butch it up for Nia. And Alex loves it. She loves how femme and girly Nia gets around her, and she loves having such a beautiful woman on her arm and showing her off. Nia loves how protective Alex gets, and Alex kind of loves being the protector. Nia’s knight in shining armor and all of that.
Of course there are overlaps in the things they take away from each relationship. Nia and Alex can be just as dorky together and Nia and Kara. Kara enjoys romance and candle light dinners with Kelly as much as she does with Nia, but each relationship gives them something the need. It’s a messy sort of perfection.