I just finished a re-watch of the show. Since I live alone, I pretty much always have the TV on, so I had this show playing in the background while I was doing stuff around the house.
To this day, I still find the choice of Tara (the actress & the character) to be very interesting. And looking back at it, I don't know if it would be clever planning or stumbling into something notable. As you mentioned, the actress isn't Show-business skinny. Instead, she is a normal woman. She's a lesbian, but her sexuality isn't the defining characteristic of who she is. It is merely a facet of who she is. We get from the character herself, that she's never really been into guys. That's more than Willow can say.
We see for years (and even after the relationship with Tara begins), that she was both attracted to and in love with men. As you noted, Xander and Oz were central figures in her life. She kissed Xander "in that way" a few times. And she had her first sexual encounter with Oz in a physical relationship that went on for months. It is even remarked later in the last season when a character starts to make passes at Willow that she was actually only in love with one woman (singular).
This brings up an interesting thought, and one that I would propose. Willow wasn't gay. She was bisexual. Why? Because I would propose that individual sexuality is actually disconnected from who someone has sex with. Anyone can have sex with anyone regardless of attraction. People do it for money all the time.
Instead, who an individual is attracted to is the determining factor. We know that Willow was attracted to and in love with both Xander and Oz. Why? Because we saw the emotional fallout when both situations concluded. We know that Willow was in love with Tara. Why? Same reason....we saw the fallout. Neither one is stronger/weaker than the other. The only difference was that by the death of Tara, Willow's character had progressed to have the ability to end the world. With Oz, she did some low level magicks that screwed some stuff up. With Xander, she had no magic ability yet, but it was within her nature to if she had the means.
~Jeordam
But seriously, yes. It wasn't just "How dare you take this nice thing away from us and make the Angel-Buffy shippers still not over season 2 laugh at us" it was "You have no right to kill off a gay character, because she belongs to us now, and never mind that six years before an election in which Barack Obama & Hillary Clinton both affirm their opposition to same-sex marriage, Tara was far and away the best representation to the world at large the LGBTQ etc community could ask for."
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Inde muagdhe Aes Sedai misain ye!
Deus Vult!
*MySmiley*
