People like to ask me what I do for fun or what my hobbies are, which is really awkward when the answer is "the PPC." Obviously nobody knows what the heck that is, and if I say "I like to write," people almost always follow up with "Oh, what kind of stuff do you write?" then I'm stuck. A vague answer like "fantasy" tends to lead to more questions. "Fanfiction" either is confusing and leads to more questions or isn't confusing and leads to more questions. Plus, being evasive makes it look like you're hiding something embarrassing, and at some point, I decided not to be embarrassed. If people don't care for it, fine. I probably don't care for their opinion, either. The PPC is my hobby and my Internet home, I love it, and I'm not giving it up. Therefore, I started to explain to anyone I think has a chance of grasping the concept. Now, I have it pretty much down to a science!
I start by asking "How much do you know about fanfiction?" to see exactly how much explaining I have to do, and slot in whichever bits I need from there. "Say you really love a book or a movie, like [The Lord of the Rings /Star Wars /whatever sufficiently popular example I think will land] and you wish there were more stories about the characters, or cool ideas that weren't explored much in the original, or stuff that happened between chapters... You could write about that! That's fanfiction."
[Do they understand about fanfiction now? If yes, proceed to step 2. If no, return to step 1.]
"So, like with everything, a lot of fanfiction is really good, but a lot of it is really bad."
[Pause for reaction, insert examples such as horrible SPaG, Sues, Just Not Getting It, etc., as seems helpful.]
"Imagine that every book, movie, whatever, is its own world, or plot continuum, and bad fanfiction messes up the continuum it's set in. The online group I'm part of writes stories about a fictional agency called the Protectors of the Plot Continuum, or PPC."
[Enunciate the big words carefully, pause for "the what?"/laughter.]
"When bad fanfic messes up a world like [Middle-earth/Star Wars/whatever], the agents of the PPC enter the world and go fix the bad stuff. Our stories are sort of a cross between parody, critique, and original work, and it's super fun."
And sometimes bits about how it's a shared universe, and we each write stories about our own agent characters, and whatever else, depending on the person's level of engagement with the topic. {= )
It tends to go surprisingly well. Every so often someone will react with "Wait, you make fun of real stories?", and then I go "Yeah, but we don't tell the author, it's not like we're rubbing it in anyone's face, and in fact we try to avoid the author finding out," and then the other person goes "Oh, okay."
Occasionally I'm even told how creative it all sounds, and then I have to say "Well, I can't take credit for the original idea—but yeah, it sure is fun to do! So fun I've been a member for over ten years!"
Explaining non-mission PPC stories is really hard, though. That extra layer of meta is super dense apparently. I've done it, though. "So, just like any agency, there are the field agents who go on missions, and then there's all the support staff... the Department of Fictional Psychology, for example..."
~Neshomeh, PPC ambassador to the public.