I'm wondering if someone linked it here or in Spoilers. It was really recent and I just don't go anywhere else (at least not regularly) these days. I never go to TWoP's forums.

More Compulsive Fun With Spreadsheets...

Okay, I added # of episodes. God bless the internet; the only number I really guessed at was Giles, since I couldn't quickly find how many season 7 episodes he did.

If you sort the dead by # of eps, it's interesting. To me. It's fairly proportional for the minor characters; more men than women at each level, but distributed pretty damn evenly until you get to characters with more than 30 episodes. And then it goes Lilah, Tara, Joyce, Fred, Anya, Cordy. Above them there's only Spike, Wesley, and Buffy.

So, to be balanced, there should be a bunch of dead men who are in the range of 35 (Lilah) to 89 (Cordy) episodes.

These are the options: Riley (31 eps), Lorne (76) and Gunn (91). There just aren't a lot of male characters in that range.

I couldn't find it here or in spoilers, but I googled (oh how do I love google? My search terms were something like: Amber Joss shoes Tara Willow Buffy wish, and I found it on the second hit)

Here's a link to a report.

From a Comic Con (? I don't know the con names) in Chicago:

(Joss)"When [Seth Green's werewolf character] Oz left rather suddenly I was devastated. I had a whole year's arc planned. said Whedon. "Though if that had not happened, I would not have met Amber Benson," referring to the actress who became Willow's lesbian love interest, Tara, following Green's departure.

Whedon also explained that prior to contract negotiation problems, he had intended to bring Benson's character back after having her murdered at the end of the sixth season, but how he was to do it.

"About three or four episodes from the end of the last season, Buffy was going to be granted one…reality altering wish. The episode would revolve around her struggling with what she could do for herself with that wish. She could bring Angel back to her..."

Whedon then briefly described the episode ending scene. "Buffy would walk into a room and show Willow these shoes that she wanted. Willow would then express disappointment and say 'You had one reality-altering wish and you wished for shoes?' Buffy would then deny that she had done that and leave. Willow would turn around and there would be Tara."

Since that would have totally Jossed the lesson we learned in season five's Forever, and again with Buffy's horrific depression in season 6? I totally buy it.

In regards to Jenny, Lyra Jane said:

It seems like most witches who aren't Willow, and possibly Tara or Amy, don't really have enough fire power to do anything *but* run when faced with a vamp. Given that, you're right she should have just. gone. home.

Jenny was not a witch. In "I, Robot--You, Jane" she described herself as a technopagan. No powers at all. Giles had to actually recite the spell for the binding to work. Jenny was, however, a huge computer geek. So she used her skill in the only way she could to fight Angel, by trying to duplicate the spell for restoring his soul. Definitely seemed like fighting the good fight to me.

Can someone refresh me- is there a reason she had to work on the soul resoration at the school? She had to have a laptop at her nice, cozy, invite-only home!

That, I don't think, was ever addressed. And I've been known to stay too long at my computer when deeply involved in whatever interests me. But, definitely, in the Buffyverse a very strong sense of self-preservation is required to survive. I'd say Jenny was a tad too altruistic.

that would have totally Jossed the lesson we learned in season five's Forever

Cindy, can you explain?

Since that would have totally Jossed the lesson we learned in season five's Forever, and again with Buffy's horrific depression in season 6? I totally buy it.

Oh my God I would have thrown things at the screen.

that would have totally Jossed the lesson we learned in season five's Forever

Cindy, can you explain?

Well, I might be stretching the definition of jossing (if Plei comes by, maybe she can set it straight). It's usually more used for canon, like when a flashback kind of fouls up what we've been learning in real time for seasons upon seasons. (I think an example of jossing might be Spike first calling Angel his sire in School Hard, and then we later learn that Dru sired him.)

But in case of the lesson, Forever was the episode that followed The Body, which dealt with the immediate aftermath of Joyce's death. In Forever, Buffy & co buried Joyce, but then Dawn went poking into Willow & Tara's magic books (with help from Willow), in search of a resurrection spell. The point of the episode (did you see it? I don't want to tell you the whole story if you don't need it) was that there are things you don't meddle in, death (and other natural occurances) being the main one.

Then, in season 6, a big part of Buffy's depression was because she had been ripped out of heaven, and brought back to life on the hellmouth. Who can blame her. At the end of season 6, when Warren shot Tara, Willow tried imporing the god Osirus to bring Tara back, but he refused, because she didn't die by supernatural means.

Now I suppose that if Buffy's would-be wish was truly reality altering, she could wish Tara had never been shot, or that Tara had not died from the bullet. But even then, since we had the episode The Wish, and our characters had so much bad experience with wishes (with Halfrek, etc.) I'm having a hard time imagining how bringing Tara back wouldn't have screwed with something, either one of the morals of the series as a whole, or the permanence of non-supernatural deaths, etc.

I think it would have been touching, but I think Joss is lucky Amber refused him for CwDP, since that refusal seems somehow to be tied to her not being brought back later, to resurrect Tara.

It's usually more used for canon, like when a flashback kind of fouls up what we've been learning in real time for seasons upon seasons.

Jossing is more when fanon (usually based on strong implications in the text) gets overwritten by a new story which lays out what really happened in a particular past time period. For example, many fan fics had been written about the era of Angel/Darla & Spike/Dru rampaging together. "Fool For Love" jossed them by nailing down specifically what happened when. They went from being stories "in canon" to AU.

Another kind of jossing happened with the retcon about who was Spike's sire. At first Spike called Angel his sire, but then later it was revealed that actually Dru sired him. Much hand waving about "a line of siring" but that was a straight up retcon.