1) Why do you ship Willow/Oz?
I don't think any other ship in the Buffyverse made its participants as happy as Willoz. I totally agree with
brinkster that they saw the best in each other and supported each other so well. Plus, they're so darn cute.
2) What is your favorite moment for them?
I adore all of their big relationship moments. All of them! To go smaller, I think so much of what I love in that relationship can be distilled into Willow-Impersonating-Vamp Willow surreptitiously waving at Oz because she *has* to make a connection with him when confronted by her mortality even though that tell is a risk in itself. And the waves of relief and happiness in Oz's face that seem both intense and characteristically deadpan at the same time.
3) Would you change a part of their relationship?
I'd make Oz a bigger part of the end of S2. He disappears after
Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered and comes back in
Becoming. A lot of stuff happened and we see that Willow's feelings for him have deepened in that period but we don't see how it happened because there's no Oz. <pout>
4) What is their biggest strength as a couple? Their biggest weakness?
Their biggest strength is also why I ship them- they see the best in each other and spur each other to make that real. They're also refreshingly low drama by Buffyverse standards. Willow cheats with Xander? Oz takes his space but he decides that his desire to have her in life is the overriding thing. Oz is a werewolf? That spurs Willow to watch over Wolf!Oz and support him through it- not to cry about it.
Their biggest weakness is Oz is pretty uncommunicative about lots of stuff and that ultimately ends their relationship more than anything else. If Oz told someone about Veruca or tried to communicate with Willow while he was away instead of leaving her to write letters with nowhere to send them, I'm sure that they would have stayed together through the end.
5) When do you think Willow really fell in love with Oz? Most people think that it was love at first Eskimo sight for Oz. Do you feel differently and would pinpoint his feelings later?
I agree with
brinkster that Oz isn't in love with Eskimo!Willow. Attracted, intrigued and connected but I'm too suspicious of "love at first sight" to call it love. However, IMO, he falls fast and I'd call it love on his part by the "sweetest smile I've ever seen".
With Willow, it's more complicated. She's intrigued and charmed from when she meets him but IMHO it takes till
Innocence for her to really see him as someone that she could really care about and it takes till
Phases for her to really start caring about him and starting to love him. She's not in love until
Becoming, IMO, which is why I wish Oz was in some of those late S2 eps. She's really in love with him through the summer between S2 and S3 and in early S3 but it takes until after
Amends for her to start equaling his love for her. And a person could even make a good argument that by
Graduation Day, she might have even exceeded his deep love for her.
6) If Willow and Oz stayed together through S6, do you think it would have changed how Willow's story went?
There's a lot of Willow's S6 story that just doesn't make sense to me or feel in-character. I still struggle with it. Considering that I found many parts of the Dark!Willow story artificial, I don't know what Oz could have done. I also really don't want to say, "Oh, if only Willow had her *boyfriend* there instead of her lesbian partner everything would be better". It's not true, in addition to being a bad gender-way to look at the story. Plus, Willow's responsible for her own actions.
That said, there were unhealthy aspects to Willow/Tara like a disproportionate focus on magic from the two of them that weren't a part of Willow/Oz.
7) Would you be open to them getting together romantically in the comics, overcoming hurdles like Oz's relationship and Willow's stated sexual preference? Did you see any romantic subtext in the S8 comics?
The hurdles to getting them together are really big- more Oz's relationship and child than Willow's sexual preference IMO. Still, I definitely saw subtext in the comics. Oz deflating Willow's guilt spiral over bringing warfare to his house ("It's Tibet. You're not exactly the first to bring war.") and Willow's reaction ("When you talk, you always know the right thing to say") was possibly the most romantic BtVS scene since Xander's proposal in
The Gift even though I know there's almost definitely no romance between Willow and Oz now.
Plus, what was great about their romance still seemed to be there just transformed into developing friendship- seeing the best in each other and reacting to that in positive ways. Oz saw humanity in Willow ("You can still be Willow Rosenberg.") and she became the most human of S8 in
Retreat. Willow sees heroism and wisdom in Oz and he becomes a hero/teacher in that time, doing more than just living quietly. At the least, they should be close friends because they're good for each other.
