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Well, if this book doesn't make you want to tape over your laptop camera, we don't know what will.

Imagine a world in which all literature was dystopian. Okay, so we may be getting to that point, 1984 and V for Vendetta helped start it all.

By the end of this video, you will be brainwashed. There's nothing you can do about it; we just wanted to let you know. We like to think we're bigg...

And you thought a nymph was a naturally lovely woodland creature. To be fair, so did we. But boy did Jonathan Swift prove us wrong.

The house may be bleak, and so will your social life when you take on this epically long novel. Dickens is pretty hip, though, so you'll earn some...

Meet the Lady of Shalott. Not to be confused with the Lady of Shallot, who is frequently in a pickle.

Hopefully, spending six minutes learning about Shakespeare's The Tempest isn't going to throw you into a fury. We'd hate to be responsible for you...

No animals were harmed and no passive voice was used in the making of this video... well, maybe scratch that last part.

It's a tale as old as time, Beauty and the er—sorry. Beowulf. Just him...and nothing else. Hey, cut the story some slack, it's like a thousand ye...

Who knew vampire fiction could involve so much paperwork? Isn't it normally just sparkles and awkward babies?

Dracula's not evil, he's just a little salty about kids these days and their newfangled technology. All he has is old fangs.

We wonder if Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin knew that her campfire story would still be inspiring fear in the hearts of literature-dreading students hu...

We're just waiting for Marvel to pick up Victor Frankenstein's origin story for a franchise. Just wait, it'll happen.

A book about a man who seals his own demise by reanimating a patchwork corpse quilt? How Romantic.

The ending is arguably the most important part of any story. Luckily, with Frankenstein, we get two for the price of one.

Dracula was either a nationalist book about vampires or a vampire book about nationalism... or maybe it was a nationalist Vampire book about capita...

Gothic novels are all about perspective... who needs a silver lining when you've got this beautiful, big, spooky thundercloud?

King Arthur's story of swordplay and chivalry is so popular, everyone from Disney to Monty Python has taken a stab at it.

Chivalry isn't dead... it's only mostly dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive.

Who knew there could be so much philosophical conflict crammed into one vampire story?

Let's play a grammar game! We know, you've been wanting to hear that all day. It's like Christmas came early.

Who wants to read another story about a kid going off to boarding school? Apparently, pretty much everybody.

Truth is often stranger than fiction, and it turns out it's usually more depressing, too. Just ask Charlotte Brontë what inspired her to write Jane Eyre.

We're honestly just impressed that knights could maintain a code of chivalry while wearing all that armor. We would have just been hot and hangry.

Even if he couldn't do magic, Merlin was a pretty stand-up guy... unless you count that time he tricked a woman into getting with his friend by disguising him as her husband.

If you like King Arthur but have a healthy skepticism about rushing into battle at the slightest provocation, have we got a book for you.

As frustrated geniuses go, Matilda is comparatively pretty well-adjusted.

Side-character spinoffs have apparently been happening for quite a long time.

Free indirect discourse? What a fascinating approach to fiction-writing!

Whoa, man. What if it's all just one big social construct?

Watch Luke Skywalker duke it out with Grendel's mom for the throne in Camelot on today's episode of "archetypal heroes."

We're sure if you had to classify the Harry Potter series by genre, your first move would be to call it a Bildungsroman... no? Just us? Well okay, just hear us out for a second.

The real witchcraft in the Harry Potter series seems to be its magical ability to brew up controversy.

Samad Miah Iqbal is having pretty much a whole lifetime's worth of bad days. Of course, things would probably be going a little better for him if he didn't kidnap his kids and ship them to Bangladesh.

In this video we'll teach you all about Beowulf. It sounds kind of like he was a vigilante...but that was a lot more accepted back then. Plus, we're pretty sure Grendel ate all of the police officers anyway.

Basically if you want to be king, not only do you have to protect your people from dying, but you also need to give them gifts. It's like being a gladiatorial Santa Claus. People sure are needy, huh?

Irie's search for identity is at the heart of Zadie Smith's White Teeth. Maybe a good secondary lesson here is "don't trust philandering twins."

Art doesn't happen in a vacuum, and The Tempest is no exception. Caliban might seem like comic relief, but the context of colonialism puts a different spin on things.

Spoiler alert: The farmer is the chosen one, that secretive-looking old dude is definitely his father, and you probably shouldn't get too attached to the wise old teacher or the dog. How did we know? It's all in the archetypes. But have you heard of the rake?

Genetically modified death mice, suspiciously codependent horticulturists, and attention-seeking activists... eh, we get it. You've got to make your own fun in the suburbs.