Intermission: Notes on the passive
Intermissions are useful, but if they stress you out, you shouldn't read them.
Sometimes から is used for the agent of a passive verb. This shows a difference in nuance. から is sometimes unacceptable.
Keigo loves passives. You're on your own here.
Adjectives are inherently intransitive and stateful. This even applies to ones that look logically transitive, like 好き.
English has a couple transitive pairs, like raise/rise and lay/lie, but modern spoken english is trying to merge these together, since modern spoken english doesn't care that much about transitivity anymore (I blew up the car vs The car blew up). This merge is not happening in japanese.