Every now and then something comes along that I shouldn’t be into because, as the putzes says these days, it “wasn’t made for me”. Like I care. A good story is where you find it, and if I end up liking something outside my norm, or not liking something despite being “made for me”, so be it. There’s so much media out there everybody gets their own stuff, and they shouldn’t have to take someone else’s stuff just because something’s popular. The “everything for meeeeeeeeeeeeee” crowd thinks otherwise, but again…like I care.
My Dress-Up Darling is a 2018 manga that completed in 2025. The male protagonist is Gojo Wakana (or maybe the other way around–Japanese and English does the family name in different positions), who as a child found an escape from his parents death in making hina dolls like his grandfather. Unfortunately a girl he was friends with found a boy “playing” with dolls creepy and broke off their friendship. Gojo has no friends who share his interests, and so loses himself in making clothes for the dolls because he has trouble painting the faces. I can totally relate. While I did have friends, nobody in my family shares my interests and the friends I have that do are few. I was that ostracized kid as well, as much self ostracized as by the bullies.
Meanwhile, Marin Kitagawa is one of the popular kids in schools. Her friends put up with her interest in characters from anime, and video games. She also has a secret desire to cosplay as those characters. When she quite literally falls into his world (still not sure how she did that), it takes a few encounters before she learns he can sew, and seeks his help cosplaying as one of her favorite video game characters. And thus the story and the romantic comedy begins.
Tonight we have the first three episodes, because Crunchyroll’s YouTube channel only has the first three even though the first arc is four episodes. And somebody at Crunchyroll is doing something right between the controversial localizing, questionable business practices, and data breaches. The videos use YouTube’s recently added multi audio track (check the settings) so you can use the Japanese or English language track, with the captions as subtitles using the dialog from the sub translation. So your viewing and listening experience is whichever one you prefer without me tracking down a second version. I already saw the first five or so episodes thanks to Crunchyroll’s 24/7 streaming channel and Sling’s 10 hour Freestream DVR, with the rest of season one still needing watching, so I actually had the subtitles on but still watched in English to compare the two. The captions sometimes goof when trying to decide between dialog and translating text, but otherwise it’s a good system. Enjoy.
BW Media Spotlight 
Two Types Of People Actors Should Stop Listening To
When DC Universe’s short-lived streaming service dropped Titans on an unsuspecting DC fanbase I started to notice something I technically knew but didn’t really think about. Actors do not see adaptation roles the same way the fans do. It kind of makes sense. To them it’s another character to play or a chance to finally work with “that director” or “those actors” that they’ve always wanted to work with. They have no fealty to the source material. I can accept that.
What I can’t accept is attacking the fans of the source materials for the wrong reasons. Amandla Stemberg dropped that infamous “diss track” I won’t torment you folks with after the traditional Star Wars fans rejected The Acolyte. Just recently Milly Alcock, either concerning her Game Of Thrones character or the upcoming Supergirl portrayal, complained about having to accept fans “weird ownership over women’s bodies“, as if she’s preparing to blame sexism for her movie potentially failing the way race and gender have been blamed for every complaint at least since the all-women Ghostbusters reimagining. In each of these and many, many other cases it missed the point of the argument by fans and media critics who had nothing personal against the actors until they opened their mouths in an interview or typed something antagonistic on social media. I don’t mean the Mark Ruffalo or Rachel Ziegler stuff. They brought that onto themselves. I mean we weren’t complaining about the actors, and we even understood their defending their dream character types or just their regular paychecks and future aspects in the business.
Their real problem is that the people giving them those jobs are getting things wrong, our old SECCA palls. The snobs and elitists remake everything in their own image. The egotists think they should be praise for it. The corporations don’t understand what is making those properties potentially good, so they leave them in the hands of people who don’t care, including the activists. And the other four are more than happy to use activists as critic shields. “You don’t like it because you’re a bigot against the changes I made” rather than “we loved things the way they were and your change is going to really ruin things.” The current race swap of Severus Snape in the Harry Potter franchise turns ordinary bullies into the magical world’s KKK when really thinking about how that race change recontextualizes his character arc.
I’m starting to see a new problem with the actors pushing back against fans. Not (just) that they don’t care about the source material over what they really want to play or having a steady paycheck for at least one season if not more. It’s that they don’t know what the actual complaints are. I used to think that was willing ignorance, but now? Unless the actor is a major activist (actorvist?), it’s that they’re listening to the wrong people within their Hollywood bubble. Those people do not have the actors’ best interests, only their own. And only one of them is their boss.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on April 9, 2026 in Internet Spotlight, Movie Spotlight, Television Spotlight and tagged actors, commentary, controversy, fans vs creators, Hollywood versus fans.
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