In Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov uses elegant language, mold-breaking protagonists, and point-of-view to play with the reader's concept of morality.

Wolf Children uses the struggle between nature and civilization to tell the story of a loving mother raising two half-wolf children while being unable to connect with their bestial sides.

Video game To the Moon puts players as two doctors who dive into a dying widower's memories to fulfill his last wish.

Being John Malkovich uses its bizarre premise to examine self-loathing and escapism.

Heartbreak Soup combines soap opera melodrama with indie comics introspection to deliver stories of love and loss.

A couple breaks up when one man just cannot stop making jokes, in a short story by Native American author and humorist Sherman Alexie.

Anaïs Mitchell takes the tragic Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydices and turns it into a rousing folk opera set in 1930s America.

Wong Kar-wai's film In the Mood for Love offers a story of two people in 1960s Hong Kong who let love slip through their fingers.

A roleplaying game that features highschool monsters clamoring for social leverage and base fulfillment, Monsterhearts offers a deadly serious take on teen sex.

When master sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini used his tremendous skill to bring the Greek myth of Apollo and Daphne to life, he created an amazing depiction of unrequited love.

Though it's a classic short story and a staple of American English courses, The Lottery has been banned by both school districts and an entire nation.

Before Hollywood started enforcing its self-imposed moral standard known as the Hays Code, Scarface shocked audiences with its violence to the point that several states and cities outright forbid it from playing.

While Frankenchrist features long songs condemning American culture, it was a poster included with the record that landed Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra and label manager Michael Bonanno in court with an obscenity charge.

Mike Diana knew his violent underground comic Boiled Angel didn't fit into his community of Largo, Florida, but he couldn't imagine that it would eventually get him arrested for obscenity.

In 1991 Raise the Red Lantern received international praise for its story about the concubine system in 1920s China, but the Chinese government saw it as a subtle condemnation of authoritarian rule.

Estonian music composer Arvo Pärt was blacklisted by the Soviet musical establishment for putting his spirituality into his songs.

One of the most banned paintings in the world was considered so shocking, the original owner kept it hidden behind a curtain. It wasn't displayed publicly for over 100 years, and even today police sometimes confiscate books bearing its image. What could this painting be of to cause such intense reactions?

On the cusp of World War II, one of the world's greatest comedians decided to condemn fascism by lampooning one of the world's most powerful leaders.

Humans have been writing smut for thousands of years, from obscene poems to dirty folk songs. But when the first erotic novel was written in 18th century England, it caused such a stir that the courts banned it for over 200 years.

When an artist cannot create, what do they do? Some will sit idle, waiting for their circumstances to change. Others will abandon their creative pursuits altogether, in favor of something less punishing. But some, like acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, will struggle to keep creating.

The African country of Mali has a long, rich musical tradition that still pervades its culture. This compilation album features the best music that was popular in Mali, before extremist Muslims banned it.

When Otto Dix returned home from the Great War, he was haunted by recurring nightmares. While many German artists were focused on the glory of combat, Dix depicted its horrors.

Martin Scorsese wanted to show a more human side to Jesus. A lot of Christians took that as doubting his holiness.

If you like stories that are unsettling and disorienting, watch Mulholland Drive. If you enjoy movies that you have to think about, or even watch multiple times to understand, watch Mulholland Drive. If you like Darren Aronofsky movies, True Detective, Tim and Eric, or any of the other countless movies and TV shows that Mulholland Drive has influenced, watch Mulholland Drive.

Lars von Trier's miniseries The Kingdom (also known by its Danish title, Riget) at first feels like just a medical drama with a bit of a supernatural edge to it. However, it doesn't take long for a deeper corruption to creep in.

Out of Skin is a short webcomic by writer and illustrator Emily Carroll. Taking place in some old European woodland (think the kind of forest from a Grimms' fairy tale), a woman who lives alone finds a pit full of women's corpses.

In most games you play as a hero. You're there to do good, save the day, and bask in the glory of an adoring populace and a happy ending. Realistically, though, heroes are rarely given the respect and thanks they deserve.

Metal is a genre of outsiders, so if mainstream society shows they're afraid of the devil, scaring them by singing about loving the devil becomes a pretty metal thing to do.

People change a lot as teenagers. It's just a matter of course that, as bodies develop and hormones start coursing, personalities shift as well. You may not have the same interests or hang out with the same people after you go through puberty, and to others you'll seem like an entirely new person. Or maybe, if you change enough, an entirely new creature.

Horror manga series Uzumaki focuses on Kurôzu-cho, a city in Japan that starts being plagued by spirals.

Welcome to Mysterium, a cooperative board game where everyone plays as a psychic trying to solve a murder, except for one player who plays a ghost trying to guide those psychics by sending them dreams in the form of "vision cards" decorated with surreal art.

The saying "a dog is a man's best friend" has been taken to heart by a lot of screenwriters. You have Toto, Sam from I Am Legend, Lassie performing ridiculous feats of heroism and saving kids from wells. If I had to put money on the most loyal dog ever created, though, I'd pick Courage.

If you've done much traveling in your life, you've probably been somewhere with customs you don't agree with. But what if you went somewhere and saw a custom that was truly abhorrent? Would you say anything? Would you do anything?

Inspiration comes from a lot of different places. For some it could be where they grew up, for others it could be a close relationship. For figurative painter Francis Bacon, inspiration came from a scream.

In the world of celebrity, stars are often packaged in certain ways for the public. But those fans don't actually know the celebrity, they just see one aspect of them displayed through their work and publicity. And when other aspects of the celebrity come to light, marring that idealized persona, those fans can turn.

Bringing together Soviet science fiction with historical fact, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat shows that sometimes fiction can cast an eerie shadow on reality.

Sometimes the world is just awful. There are enough cruel people that you don't need ghosts or witches to make existence horrifying, you just need to run into the wrong person. And in the world of hip hop, that person is MC Ride of Death Grips.

Tabletop RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons have been on the rise recently, as they're a great way to exercise your creativity while being social and disconnecting from technology for a few hours. For a single night of horror RPG fun that you and all your friends can enjoy, I recommend Dread.

It seems like more and more these days people are letting media raise their kids. But in a world where almost all media is made with profit in mind, what kinds of ideas are really being planted in those children's heads?

Have you ever had a revenge fantasy?

There's a lot of concern these days over where our food comes from. You think you're eating some delicious frozen yogurt, but it's actually a subterranean parasite that takes over your brain and eats out your innards.

Remember when everyone was obsessed with ghost hunting about half a decade back? That was weird, wasn't it? Reality TV producers just decided to follow a bunch of teams with EMF meters and tricked-out vans, traveling from one old dilapidated building to another and yelling "DID YOU JUST HEAR THAT?" at each other.

H.P. Lovecraft is one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th century. His Cthulhu mythos is read and recognized all over the world. If you're a Lovecraft fan but you haven't read any of his original stories yet, The Colour Out of Space is a great place to start.

The works of Louise Bourgeois depict strange furniture displayed in cages, severed body parts arranged in geometric designs, and totemic people made of fabric. However, by far her most popular work is Maman, a massive 30-foot-tall spider made of black steel, holding a sac of white marble eggs.

They played fast, driving songs with lyrics ripped from schlocky B-grade horror flicks, and they dressed like gothic greasers with their hair all slicked forward to a point (a style called 'the devilock' that thankfully never caught on). This was Misfits, and they are the originators of horror punk.

Can you trust your friends? When your bud invites you for a night out, are you sure he's not actually a crazed sorcerer, or a mad scientist, or even a merman leading you to your doom? Well, Betrayal at House on the Hill is a board game where these are all legitimate fears.

Prescription drug abuse has gotten so bad that the CDC has labeled it an epidemic. As a result communities that thought they would never have to deal with widespread drug problems are learning that people struggling with drug addiction don't all look like stereotypical junkies. They can look like your neighbors as well.

Bullied kids are the subjects of countless horror tales. Ever since Carrie debuted in 1978, writers have employed the tormented outcast as a monster that is both frightening and yet sympathetic.

Whenever a list of 'the best horror comics' comes up, you can bet Black Hole will be on that list. Released over a period of ten years, this twelve-issue series seems to touch a nerve with a lot of people who tend to read comics.

"Something was pouring from his mouth. He examined his sleeve. Blood? Blood. Crimson, copper-smelling blood, his blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. And bits of sick."

This line kicks off Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, a British horror comedy series and parody of both Stephen King and low-budget 80s TV shows.

Every family has a secret. The one that no one wants to talk about, but it's still always there, causing tension. Ruining dinner. Slowly eating away at the back of everyone's mind. Set in a declining Rust Belt town, My Father's Long, Long Legs is about a family with an especially strange secret.

Francisco Goya, Spain's preeminent artist of the early 19th century, often produced paintings that reflected what was going on in Spain at the time. In 1819 Goya was old, recovering from serious illness, and pessimistic about the future of his country. These factors lead him to take the pleasant rural landscape murals painted on the walls of his home, douse them in dark ink, and cover them with the Black Paintings.

We've all met one of those guys who seems to have a problem with women. The guy who talks about women like they're a completely different species, unable to relate to them as human beings but instead as things to be desired.