Okay that helps some, yes! Some of the ways katakana has been used has thrown me. Some of them like ホントに instead of 本当に I can make the connection. I found しょげる on jisho.org but wasn’t sure it was the same thing as ショゲる because of the katakana. So that confirmation helps!
And I was totally thinking the なきゃ in a “have to do” sense instead of conditional so yeah that definitely helps!
For the katakana, that threw me off as well initially, but it’s quite common to write some words or even parts of words in katakana (I think it’s used for emphasis, for example) so when I saw the hit on Jisho I was pretty convinced.
It only means “have to do” when it is なきゃならない, and although the ならない is sometimes left out, it is only left out at the end of a sentence (because sentence ends sometimes tend to be left out) but never randomly in the middle, at least in my experience. So if it is just なきゃ in the middle of a sentence, I always expect it to be a conditional.
I checked an English translation and it said “Do you enjoy manipulating people!?”
I found this about it, but not fully grasping this explanation, though. My understanding is that the phrase with 転 means it’s some kind of complete control/manipulation? And with 踊 it means there are people who notice somebody is getting manipulated? Can’t make sense of this.
Huh, very interesting. I can see how that can mean to manipulate somebody, but I still don’t fully understand the difference to the same phrase but with the other kanji.
Oh, then I totally misunderstood your question! Which other kanji, by the way?
Oh, now your question makes a lot more sense
Well, it’s not a different kanji but simply two different words:
踊らされている - from おどらす - to manipulate, to let dance
転がされている - from ころがす - to roll
So the way the poster described it, in the “let dance” version the manipulation seems to be less obvious than in the “roll around” version. Does this help somehow?
Ah, yeah. Not just kanji but a whole different word is what I meant. I was a bit tired.
All right, so the “dance” version means it’s less obvious. Thanks, I didn’t really understand the explanation in the link.
I was wondering whether that might be the issue here. So for the first version it says that the person being manipulated does not notice it, but that there is somebody doing the manipulation. And for the second version, that somebody is fully controlling the other person. And that both variants mean the same in the end, but that the difference is kinda how the controlling is performed.
Or at least that’s my understanding
Makes sense to me now, thanks. I first thought the first example meant there are other people aware of the person who’s being controlled instead of that there’s somebody doing the manipulation. The other stuff I understood like you did, yay.
Phew, just finished! This week wasn’t too difficult, but like @Dani_L I had a bit of confusion around the katakana! For some reason I misread ショゲ as “jog” and couldn’t work out HOW that would fit.
Thanks for asking the tough questions so early in the week!
I think I was thinking ショゲ was some kind of game or something lol. I was way off.
Haha yeah I had a bit of extra free time this week and got a bit overzealous in my reading. I’m a little ahead now so I have some questions saved up for the next few weeks. I enjoy reading with everyone though so I may have to find another book to read when I finish each week’s page count.
Some of them like ホントに instead of 本当に I can make the connection. I found しょげる on 
