By Dolores Labouchere, BA (Hons)

Joyce first graced our screens in 1997, but, due to her elegance being overshadowed by the nubile beauty of the rest of the Buffy cast, Joyce for too long did not receive the adulation she so richly deserved. The elevation of Joyce to folk hero through JOYFFA has, therefore, been a relatively recent occurrence. Her ultimate victory was a combination of the general trend to make online tributes to the cast and characters of Buffy more lavish and more indepth, the fact that an impetus for some sort of online presence solely for Joyce was growing, and the insane devotion shown by two Scottish nutters.

There had been some pieces of fanfiction involving Joyce written since the online fandom began to churn out stories involving our heroes, but no concerted effort had ever been made to bring the fic into one place, or encourage its writing until 2000. There were two archives in which Joyce was a part of a pairing – 'It's More of a Hot Night' for Joyce/Xander fic, and the self-explanatory 'GilesnJoyce' site and list. However, in the February of that year, the noble Charles Cook set up a Joyce mailing list with the principle aim of being a forum for Joyce fanfiction. JustJoyce, as the list was known, was the first ever Joyce-centric mailing list. It attracted a small band of dedicated followers, but list traffic remained light.

Charles' aim was noble, but the inspiration for JOYFFA came from a more seedy background. On the 1^st May of 2000 on the Unconventional Relationshippers' (UCSL) list, Te, one of the list members and a respected author, put out a request for some Joyce smut. Dolores, then a relatively new arrival in the Buffy fandom, took it upon herself to write some – and produced a piece called Mad About the Boy. It involved graphic scenes of Joyce having sex with Devon (the lead singer in Oz's band) – and although it drew some positive feedback, not everyone welcomed it. Dolores' then flatmate Faithtastic (at that point known as inaneway) had yet to join the Buffy fandom online, although she had watched the show longer than Labouchere. Seeking approval for her work, however, Dolores showed her the piece - to a reaction of disgust and horror.

However, this initial reaction soon mellowed into a deep attraction to Joyce for inaneway, and in turn her own literary talents were put to use in Joycefic. Call Me Mistress Joyce, a particularly sleazy S&M fic and 'Burning the Bridges', the first in a series of Joyce/Faith fics were produced in quick succession. The newly re-named Faithtastic therefore joined the Buffy fandom through Joyce.

Meanwhile, Charles had requested that Dolores join JustJoyce to post Mad About the Boy. Dolores soon did, and began to take stock of the enormous potential for Joyce fic and the lack of proper respect shown for such a pivotal figure in the Buffyverse – or, more to the point, the lack of a central point for Joyce fic. After discussing this malady with Faithtastic the idea for JOYFFA was born.

Faithtastic designed an initial site, whilst Dolores sought permission from Charles to make the site an extension of the mailing list – thus gaining immediate authority in the fandom. Charles was enthusiastic, and on the 28^th of May 2000, JOYFFA, the Joyce Fan Fiction Archive was launched on Dencity.

The initial site design was primitive yet pretty, with a lavender and purple colour scheme. The content was sparse – a handful of fics, a basic links page and a small tribute to Joyce and her magnificence. It was, however, a start.

Gathering together the Joyce fic written prior to JOYFFA's inauguration took time – and is still not completed - it perhaps never will be. However, over the summer both Dolores and Faithtastic worked to archive as many fics as they could find, and the archive slowly grew, moving to the webspace allocated by Dolores' ISP when Dencity proved to be a "whore". However, both Dictators (as they had styled themselves) had begun to be more and more obsessed with Joyce. By September the site was no longer adequate to fulfil their Joyce devotion and was redesigned to allow for a greater level of content.

This new site was pink and black in theme, and graphically a huge improvement on the first site. Fic continued to pour in, but new initatives were afoot. In October, the Gallery section was launched, with famous pieces of art restyled to include Joyce. At the same time a new design was unveiled, this time with a golden yellow and black scheme. In December the entire site moved to its own web domain, having outgrown the free web space that it lived in. At that point the huge project of reviewing every episode in which Joyce made an appearance was begun, and the archive split into author and pairings pages.

Even so, instead of sating the Dictators' Joyce obsession it only fuelled it. Despite the crushing news of Joyce's death, they carried on with their crusade.The site became the Joyce zone of the BtVS Writers' Guild, underwent its third redesign (to a more understated yellow) to accommodate increased writing resources, and a new page dedicated to the work otherwise of Kristine Sutherland, the actress who plays Joyce. The mammoth task of reviewing all of the episodes featuring Joyce was completed (although periodically updated to reflect Joyce's occassional visits from beyond the grave). This huge expansion means that the Dictators became pompous and dropped the full title of JOYFFA as they felt the site had become much more than a mere fanfic archive.

It is now JOYFFA, the ultimate Joyce Summers and Kristine Sutherland resource (for who knows now what Kristine will do), and its creators are now the acknowledged Joyce experts in the online field. It now nears its second anniversary larger than ever before, and has been the recipient of several web awards for excellence. Although the lack of Joyce in the Buffyverse has meant less fic has been written and less content has been added, the Dictators have no intentions of letting the site languish - indeed, it has now moved to its fourth home on Dolores' own domain to accommodate its growth.

In conclusion, their site has meant that for the first time, Joyce fans have a site that reflects the true glory of their idol, and it is a site that rivals the greatest of the tributes to the main characters. As the Dictators say themselves, it is no more than she deserves.