Squid Games Writer Novels & Stories

I binged a bunch of 'Squid Game' fics right after the show dropped, and honestly, most of the backstory exploration felt kind of rushed? A lot of writers seemed desperate to give Gi-hun a tragic past that 'explains' his gambling, like a dead wife or a kid he couldn't save. It felt less like character exploration and more like checking boxes for a tragic hero. The more interesting ones I found ignored the main cast and dug into the side players—the old man, the gangster, even the guards. There's a short fic I still think about that wrote the guard with the circle as a former debt collector who joined to pay for his sister's surgery, and the moral decay was way more subtle than the show's violence.

Maybe it's because the show gives you these archetypes more than fully fleshed-out people, so fans rush to fill the blanks with whatever trauma tropes are handy. I'd love to see more fics that explore backstories not as a cause for their game actions, but as a contrast—what if Player 001 was a genuinely happy, fulfilled man who just wanted to feel alive again? That'd mess with the themes more.