if Tara never died in season 6 what would she & Willow be doing today.

[joseph]

For me they would be running a business, and they would be Parents.

 

[thetopher]

They'd be joint-head of their own coven of witches somewhere quaint and rural (in US or maybe England) with ties to other covens world-wide.
Willow would have some on-line business (maybe web design) to help with running costs/for fun. She would still help out her friend Buffy with magic stuff but she wouldn't be as involved as she is now, neither would Tara because of the 'near-miss bullet' that nearly destroyed everything.
Also Tara wouldn't want to risk Willow do anything dark like she did with Buffy's resurrection, so there would be that as well.
Tara would maybe do palm readings and stuff at a small business in the nearby village.
They would have quite a few adorable kittens.

 

[DeadlyDuo]

They'd be joint-head of their own coven of witches somewhere quaint and rural (in US or maybe England) with ties to other covens world-wide.
Willow would have some on-line business (maybe web design) to help with running costs/for fun. She would still help out her friend Buffy with magic stuff but she wouldn't be as involved as she is now, neither would Tara because of the 'near-miss bullet' that nearly destroyed everything.
Also Tara wouldn't want to risk Willow do anything dark like she did with Buffy's resurrection, so there would be that as well.
Tara would maybe do palm readings and stuff at a small business in the nearby village.
They would have quite a few adorable kittens.

Agreed, it would be a very domestic life. If Spike didn't have his soul, then Tara would need to count the kittens every time after he visited to ensure that none of them end up on a poker table.

 

[WillowFromBuffy]

Tara runs a commune for survivors of trauma and other people who feel uncomfortable living in the modern, fast moving world. Willow is a scholar, who travels the world and speaks on such topics as spirituality, the practical applications of magic, feminism and LGBT+ activism. She always have to talk to Tara on the phone before a big speech to calm her nerves. They have a daughter together. Xander is helping them build a tree house in a pine forest by a big lake. This gives him the opportunity to bound with his daughter and teach her some DIY skills to help out her less practically inclined mothers.

 

[DeadlyDuo]

Tara runs a commune for survivors of trauma and other people who feel uncomfortable living in the modern, fast moving world. Willow is a scholar, who travels the world and speaks on such topics as spirituality, the practical applications of magic, feminism and LGBT+ activism. She always have to talk to Tara on the phone before a big speech to calm her nerves. They have a daughter together. Xander is helping them build a tree house in a pine forest by a big lake. This gives him the opportunity to bound with his daughter and teach her some DIY skills to help out her less practically inclined mothers.

Why is Xander's daughter living with Willow and Tara and not him?

 

[WillowFromBuffy]

Why is Xander's daughter living with Willow and Tara and not him?

Tara is the mother and Xander is the biological father. Even if he does not live with them, they consider him as one of the parents.

 

[DeadlyDuo]

Tara is the mother and Xander is the biological father. Even if he does not live with them, they consider him as one of the parents.

So did Xander sleep with Tara or is he just a sperm donor that they know?

 

[WillowFromBuffy]

So did Xander sleep with Tara or is he just a sperm donor that they know?

Of course he didn't That is why I stressed biological father.

 

[DeadlyDuo]

Of course he didn't That is why I stressed biological father.

So sperm donor?

 

[WillowFromBuffy]

So sperm donor?

Technically, yes, but Will and Tara feel that term is a too impersonal. They think of him as a spare parent.

 

[thrasherpix]

Willow would become a teacher at Sunnydale High (she loved teaching, after all). And Tara would be a school counselor (she was taking, and probably majoring in, psychology). Both would be guardians of the Hellmouth, and watch closely for signs of Hellmouth intrusions that must be neutralized.

Obviously, this assumes Sunnydale still exists. They could find another Hellmouth(y) region otherwise. Los Angeles needs many good teachers and counselors...though I personally think an empath like Tara would not handle urban living well, and they'd need to go somewhere smaller (which also excludes Cleveland).

 

[HelloIAmHawt]

Comin' in with a buzzkill post. If Tara hadn't died then part of being in a relationship with her, for Willow, would be to never practice magic again. If she did start practicing again, the thin un-discussed, "can you just be kissing me right now" sort of "forgiveness" that Tara gave near the end of s6 (let's face it, in relationships you really do need to talk about shit) would have been destroyed. Her entire forgiveness was predicated on Willow being tech-gal and never touching the forces of darkness again. If that were true the series would end quite differently, as the only reason the First didn't win? Willow's magic. And this was a last-minute ditch effort plan, so it was the only possible plan.

So Tara's death was kind of required for our team to save the world, especially since there isn't much beyond that death that could have triggered Willow's deep dive into darkness that ultimately brought her to the light, as it were (magic school in the UK; the realization that magic is a part of her).

For a more fun answer--I'd like to imagine Tara opening a little psychic shop for humans and demons alike (ala Lorne's bar) to help our team keep their ear to the ground while Willow taught IT classes and maybe worked her way to techno-paganism after she proved to Tara that she had her shit under control.

 

[Spanky]

I think Willow would have come to her senses and dumped Tara. Preferably for Kennedy or Oz. Willow would be living her life happy and healthy, while poor sensitive Tara would convert to Christianity and be lamenting her past actions and deeds in a nunnery somewhere.

 

[WillowFromBuffy]

@HelloIAmHawt Willow went through a rough patch with that pesky paradoxical lack of self esteem combined with light megalomania. I don't think it is fair to call her an addict or presume she could never become a good partner for Tara again. She just needed to grasp the seriousness of her problem and be shown that she was still worthy of being loved. By Seeing Red, all of this had happened.

 

[HelloIAmHawt]

@HelloIAmHawt Willow went through a rough patch with that pesky paradoxical lack of self esteem combined with light megalomania. I don't think it is fair to call her an addict or presume she could never become a good partner for Tara again. She just needed to grasp the seriousness of her problem and be shown that she was still worthy of being loved. By Seeing Red, all of this had happened.

Not saying that she wasn't prepared for being a good partner to Tara, but that they had a lot to work through and it would have gotten a lot less whimsical sex time should Tara not have been shot like a day after they "reconciled" (I've never really cared for them just skipping over the hard part to get us nice and happy about them boinking just in time to be devastated by Tara's death).

 

[WillowFromBuffy]

Not saying that she wasn't prepared for being a good partner to Tara, but that they had a lot to work through and it would have gotten a lot less whimsical sex time should Tara not have been shot like a day after they "reconciled" (I've never really cared for them just skipping over the hard part to get us nice and happy about them boinking just in time to be devastated by Tara's death).

But this isn't the first time they meet after the break up. They've met several times and we know they've been speaking on the phone off screen. We as the audience have heard Tara tell Willow how she felt about their relationship and about Willow's abuse of magic and we have seen Willow's journey out of depression. Buffy is a fast moving show. We can assume they were going to speak more later, but do we really need to see them attend couple's counselling?

 

[HelloIAmHawt]

But this isn't the first time they meet after the break up. They've met several times and we know they've been speaking on the phone off screen. We as the audience have heard Tara tell Willow how she felt about their relationship and about Willow's abuse of magic and we have seen Willow's journey out of depression. Buffy is a fast moving show. We can assume they were going to speak more later, but do we really need to see them attend couple's counselling?

Honestly, I'm not even sure what any of this has to do with my original post or the question at hand. But to answer to some strawman meandering, I agree, no, I don't think anyone would want to watch couples' counseling outside of your standard soap opera. But I do think that people would want to see a trust be rebuilt in some way instead of this messy heap of sentimentality that is presented to us.

As a connoisseur of good storytelling, I certainly wouldn't have been satisfied with "can we just skip it" being the end of their quarrel and everything thereafter being just like before, lalalala. These are two different people now. IMO, what was done to fix the relationship in canon was, at its heart, cheap and shoddy writing (though yes, it was some heart candy). Just some emotional abuse (upon us as fans) to make her death and Willow's subsequent world-ending-tantrum more hard-hitting.

But for real if Willow hadn't had something to get her back into the magics hard everyone would be dead anyway. Or we would have had to have brought a whole coven in to do the magic spell to turn flip the switch for the potentials.

 

[WillowFromBuffy]

Well, I honestly tried my best to keep my posts relevant both to the subject of the thread and the posts I was replying to. As a connoisseur of bad storytelling I truly appreciated the shoddy exploration of Will and Tara's relationship that stretched the entire season and which I personally felt sufficiently explored the sides of both parties. By Entropy, I had no doubts that they were ready to get back together fully. I mean, their reconciliation had come several episodes prior.

 

[HelloIAmHawt]

Hey, I love Tara and Willow, but that ending was rushed, all there to serve Willow's plotline, and well, Tara was more of a device than anything else. TBH they just made her a Willow-love-bot for convenience's sake whenever it was needed, so it's not like it's surprising. Tara would have been a lot more interesting if she ever got her own plotline (her familial abuse one got close, but it was still all damsel, all the time). All a matter of opinion, of course.

 

[WillowFromBuffy]

I will always be a Willow fan first and foremost, so I was fine with Tara being mostly an auxiliary character, though I felt she was consistent and she often spoke her mind and challenged Willow's opinions. I would love to see more from Tara herself and see a deeper exploration of her relationship to Willow and its obstacles, but I feel what we got was sufficient. We always crave more.

Tara started speaking her mind more in S5 and in S6 she started interacting more with other characters than Willow, so I found it to be an upward curve until ... you know ... she was abruptly and brutally killed, but that is the way of the Whedonverse.