With the exception of Xander and (after S3) Giles, all the characters you identified with were always women

I think it's possible to identify with Oz or Riley (pre-vamp ho visits) at least as much as it's possible to identify with Tara or Anya -- all four are on the show as romantic partners. But like ita, I don't really identify with anyone, so I'm not sure I'm right about this. Why do you think the women are easier to identify with?

Yes. And it's extremely unhealthy to date Angel. I just realized this morning that if you fall in love with Angel, you'll kill yourself. Or at the very least, deliberately do something that causes your own death.

Hmm. If we count self preservation instinct-free curiousity, this even applies to Fred. She and Angel did go out to the movies together and then again for ice cream.

So Lindsey was doomed no matter what...

I think Lindsey was aiming for suicide via dating Angel.

And, since the discussion originally began with "sure seems like the creators might be sexist," do we have to skew the fact that it's KNOWN that they wanted to kill Oz eventually and also that it's KNOWN that, barring that, Joss sure wanted to bring Tara back and Amber said "no"? (A fact of which I'm glad, personally.) Assuming, of course, we're only counting "permanently dead" as "dead."

And what makes a character someone we personally invest in, anyway? Why was Darla loved more than Holtz, so that we count her death as important but his as not? He, too, was often portrayed sympathetically, probably more often than Darla was. But the writing and acting didn't get under our skin as much, or else his death might have had more significance. I, personally, had no emotion when they killed Cordy, for that matter, as she had already been dead by bad writing in my head for ages (any emotion I had was entirely for Angel, not for personal investment in Cordy by that point).

And Fred, rather than Wesley or Gunn or Knox, had to be Illyria's victim so that Illyria could be the hot exotic goddess that she is. Girl gods are prettier. This makes perfect sense in my mind.

But the writing and acting didn't get under our skin as much, or else his death might have had more significance.

Holtz's death had tremendous significance, but not in the traditional sense. What was important was not that he died, but how he died.

Actually, now that I think about it, his death propelling Connor's motivations is kind of like Tara's death propelling Willow's. Except Tara didn't leave Willow a fucked up letter.

Strega, that's a very fine spreadsheet. I'm interested to see that you've included both Ben and Glory, as seperate characters, but you've got Glory down as 'g' (for 'good', I assume), and Ben down as 'e' for evil. Probably the right choice-- to include both-- but I'm pretty sure they ought to be the other way around on the g/e thing.

Maybe it's 'g' for 'god' and 'e' for 'eww.'

And Fred, rather than Wesley or Gunn or Knox, had to be Illyria's victim so that Illyria could be the hot exotic goddess that she is. Girl gods are prettier. This makes perfect sense in my mind.

Although it would have been really, really cool, in an alta-verse way, to have Illyria infect Wesley.

Interesting stat from that spreadsheet: There were 27 evil males between the 2 shows. Of those, 24 died, and 1 we're unsure of.

do we have to skew the fact that it's KNOWN that they wanted to kill Oz eventually and also that it's KNOWN that, barring that, Joss sure wanted to bring Tara back and Amber said "no"?

In a word: No. Saying "this is how it would have played out" doesn't affect what was shown onscreen one iota. Also, I thought he wanted to bring Tara's ghost back as the First, not actually resurrect the character. Even if she had appeared as a ghost, I wouldn't count that as a resurrection.

There have been authoritative-sounding rumors (unconfirmed by Joss, so far as I know) that Tara would have been physically resurrected by the end of Season 7 had Amber signed on for that storyline.

And Fred, rather than Wesley or Gunn or Knox, had to be Illyria's victim so that Illyria could be the hot exotic goddess that she is. Girl gods are prettier. This makes perfect sense in my mind.

Although I quite liked "Time Bomb," I sorta wish I'd had the chance to see what some of the early spoilers made of the episode's plot: Angel and Illyria bouncing from one alternate timeline to another, and seeing the results of differences in the way events played out. My impression was that there might have been several different Illyria hosts seen, depending on who happened to lean over its sarcophagus in each timeline.