Last month saw creative industries of all origins unite in common cause under a singular topical headline: ‘MAKE IT FAIR’. Journalists, publishers, artists, filmmakers, and pretty much anyone who makes a living off copyrighted work, have banded together against the government’s proposal to allow its use in AI generated content without fair payment to its creators.

Despite having over 40 million copies of her novels in print worldwide, until recently I had never read a single word of Jodi Picoult before. While I’d heard of her most renowned successes like “My Sister’s Keeper”, I never would have thought to pick one up until I stumbled across her latest release “By Any Other Name”. Centred around two women born centuries apart, united by blood, a talent for playwriting and the misfortune of being a girl in a world that doesn’t want to hear our stories told, I couldn’t resist.

While my personal distaste at the prospect of yet another dreaded “remake” in Hollywood would normally have me rolling my eyes, I could hardly disregard Robert Eggers’s latest venture into the gothic and ghoulish with “Nosferatu”. Having watched the original silent picture as a budding film student, I was eager to witness how Eggers planned to reimagine this narrative for a modern audience — especially one so historically entrenched in the archaic Christian values of 19th century Germany.

The market for fantasy sagas has increased exponentially over the past couple of years, with the rise of BookTok saturating the genre with fresh and eager new writers hoping to publish the next hit. However, some of us have noticed that with the rise in popularity, so accompanies an increase in the same hackneyed tropes and deficient technique in attempts to cash in on a commercially viable trend.