Dear X) Found a review about DX that I totally agree with

I'm still buzzing from watching DX. I want to say something, but I suck at articulating my thoughts, so I checked out this tweet and it perfectly summed up my opinion. I wanted to bring it here to recommend it to any anons who feel the same! If the original work tried to achieve a certain balance between Baek Ah-jin and the people around her, the drama, honestly, felt focused entirely on Baek Ah-jin as the single centerpiece. IMO, I think they made Ah-jin's past struggles even tougher than the original to make viewers empathize with her character more. Midway through, watching the scene where Ah-jin felt emotion because of her grandma, I wondered if this is exactly how the character would have been if she existed in real life. Even though the original character is described as ruthless and cold-blooded, was she really like that? She's human; could she have truly felt zero emotional instability, even for a single moment? I can't be 100% sure she was 0% affected. I believe she wanted complete love, attention, and affection. But since she never experienced any of that, when she finally did, those deeply hidden emotional deficiencies she didn't even know she had suddenly burst out and confused her. I believe that if a person has something missing, even if they aren't aware of it, they instinctively try to fill that void somehow, in some way. That's why people who are unfamiliar with or awkward with emotions struggle with their own feelings without realizing it, and ultimately, that seems to be what happened to Baek Ah-jin (even if it was just for a short time).

Also, I really loved how they adapted the parts from the original involving Baek Ah-jin’s pregnancy, suicide attempt, and escape. The Baek Ah-jin I imagined is someone who values her life above all else and would never give up, no matter the hardship. It felt contradictory for her to get pregnant just as a means to climb the ranks, attempt suicide after her mental state crumbled due to a tell-all documentary, and then escape overseas to marry a powerful man and raise a kid. How could someone who yearns for life so much easily attempt suicide or run away? The drama's mindset—'Why should I die? You, who is stuck to me like a shackle, should die. I'm going to live. How far have I come already?'—is much more believable. I felt like the real Baek Ah-jin would be the type of person who, even when facing complete ruin, doesn't run away from her life, but fiercely and maliciously protects her own path until the very end. And in the ending, I truly felt Ah-jin achieved liberation. It's true that Ah-jin used others to build her life, but it’s bitter to realize that she herself likely thought she *needed* someone else’s help just to achieve anything—even the act of using others. From her perspective, those situations where she couldn't do anything on her own must have felt like a prison without bars or invisible shackles. In the end, cutting off those shackles one by one, and finally severing the last one *completely* by surviving purely on her own strength—that moment she stood alone—must have been the moment Ah-jin had craved all along. Baek Ah-jin, who would stop at nothing to escape hell, literally found freedom by breaking out of it. I don't know how she'll live afterward, but I think she can finally live the life she always wanted, where she is completely the subject of her own existence. In that sense, because this drama was about Baek Ah-jin, by Baek Ah-jin, and for Baek Ah-jin from start to finish, I think they handled Baek Ah-jin’s conclusion quite well.

And this is what actress Kim Yoo-jung said when asked if she had a message to convey through this work, and honestly, that's exactly the kind of thinking it provoked. (This was a Q&A video uploaded by her agency about DX, and watching the interview after finishing the drama helped me think about the drama more deeply and precisely—highly recommended!) The actress's answer: "I hope this project encourages people to think deeply and ask themselves questions, as I believe works that prompt questioning are good works. Broadly speaking: Who can cast a stone at that child? Is this wrong? Then how should she have acted?" She hoped the drama would remain something viewers continue to ponder, and honestly, I think it will. It left such a huge lingering impression, and the more I watch it, the more varied interpretations and emotions surface, so it looks like this will become a favorite of mine. Oops, this post got super bloated writing all this. Anyway, it was so interesting because it had a different charm compared to the original!