About this site
by Lukas Kendall
PROTOCALIA is a name I came up with for what I realized was my favorite kind of storytelling: about the systems that human beings make, and the pressures they place on the individual.
A PROTOCALIA story typically has these characteristics:
- Human-constructed systems (institutions, hierarchies, professions, cultures, families, ideologies) bear down on individuals.
- The story examines how the system shapes desire, identity, and behavior—not just as backdrop but as the engine.
- The characters have genuine interior lives that the system distorts, suppresses, or weaponizes.
- The work treats both system and individual with moral seriousness. No easy villains. No easy victims.
It's most visible in genre—sci-fi, horror, thrillers externalize the systems pressing on individuals—but it works just as powerfully in stories about academia, marriages, workplaces and cultures.
I am a producer, filmmaker and entrepreneur—but really, a lifelong fan who has gotten such joy and nourishment from these stories that I would love for more of them to be made.
We publish essays and interviews to enlighten, entertain, and champion relevant works and creators. The hope is to encourage more storytelling—in movies, television, and beyond—that says something truthful about humanity.
The site is NOT, in and of itself, a commercial venture. We are not selling script services or production resources—or even subscriptions.
It is also NOT a movie or script review site. There are innumerable places online for those. This is about discussing and promoting what we love.
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