Does That Sound Like Fun to You?

Kid: How'd you get the metal parts, mister? I want some!
Lothar: Oh, you do, do you? Let me tell you a story. I was kidnapped, drugged and tortured as a group of scientists wanted to see what would happen if my genetically modified body was combined with bionics. So I was strapped down and injected with a chemical cocktail that caused horrific pain and permanently bonded me to cold, unfeeling metal. The next thing I know I wake up in a blood rage and slaughtered my way through dozens of armed guards to emerge in the middle of nowhere, alone and half dead. Does that sound like fun?
Kid: Oh, so like the opening of Guyver then? I love that anime!

— Exterminatus Now

Yes.

A younger, more naive, or just plain stupid character says something would be cool to a more experienced character who may or may not have been through the experience. The more experienced character then goes to lengths to explain just how not cool that experience would actually be. He or she then asks the Naïve Newcomer if they still think it would be cool. Unless it's a subversion, the answer is generally a resounding "no". (And contexts in which the answer would be yes would be a Blunt "Yes" by their very nature.)

Useful in many functions of drama. For one, it immediately shows the more experienced character to be the older and wiser of the two. It may be used in a Deconstruction to show just how awful a seemingly incredibly cool thing would be in real life. And of course, it can actually be quite funny to see the more experienced character completely terrify the younger one with a horrifically descriptive summary of the activity as the younger one desperately tries to backpedal on their stance.

A common version is for the New Meat imagining that War Is Glorious to be corrected by the Shell-Shocked Veteran that no, War Is Hell.

Of course, frequently it's subverted as the younger character places a rebuttal on exactly why it is still cool. Or, when the "fun" is particularly nasty, having that character think it fun because of all the trouble it brings.

Also see Wasn't That Fun?.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• +Anima: After Sinon becomes a +Anima to escape from her pet lions, Magdala tries to rationalize why this is a good thing that he should thank her for by saying that she's the reason he can fly now. Husky, who had just lectured her on how +Anima are usually childhood trauma victims, is understandably furious, but Cooro jumps in to give a slightly more passive-aggressive version of this trope by cheerfully asking Magdala if she would enjoy becoming a +Anima. Tellingly, she can't come up with an answer.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: In keeping with the series' Deconstructor Fleet nature, this is the subtext of Shinji's early interactions with Toji and Keisuke, and is a Central Theme to the series overall. While the exact details are... complicated, no sane person would EVER willingly pilot an EVA Unit once they knew what it involved.

Film — Animated

• Shrek:
  Donkey: I don't get it, Shrek. Why didn't you just pull some of that ogre stuff on him? You know, throttle him, lay siege to his fortress, grind his bones to make your bread? You know, the whole ogre trip.
  Shrek: Oh, I know. Maybe I could have decapitated an entire village, put their heads on a pike, grab a knife, cut open their spleen and drink their fluids. Does that sound good to you?
  Donkey: Uh, no, not really, no.

Film — Live-Action

• In All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Paul goes back to his old classroom to see Kantorek using the same speech he told his class on another group of young innocent students. Excited to see one of his former students drop in, Kantorek encourages Paul to tell them how grand being in the front lines are. To his credit, Paul is really uncomfortable and insists he has nothing to say, but caves to his teacher's demands... and flat out tells the students that War Is Hell and accuses their teacher of sending them to their deaths like his class before them. Because the students there haven't experienced it for themselves, virtually all of them quickly denounce him as a defeatist.
• Half Baked:
  Mary Jane Potman: My father's a drug dealer.
  Thurgood Jenkins: Wow, that must've been the shit.
  Mary Jane Potman: It ruined his life.
  Thurgood Jenkins: That must've been shitty.
• Independence Day: The president delivers one to the head scientist of Area 51 when the latter comments that the last 24 hours have been really exciting. The president doesn't believe the destruction of every major American city and the deaths of millions of people world-wide is "exciting". Subverted in that the scientist wasn't referring to the destruction, he was referring to the alien space ship in their custody acting up.
• The Last Samurai: After arriving in Japan, Algren and his interpreter Simon Graham have a conversation on the Indians. Graham remarks to Algren that he found scalping interesting, but never understood the technique. Algren goes on to explain in excruciating detail exactly what it would feel like to be scalped. By the end of it, Graham is visibly disturbed, and looks about to pass out.
• Men in Black:
  Kay: Imagine a giant cockroach, with unlimited strength, a massive inferiority complex, and a real short temper, is tear-assing around Manhattan Island in a brand-new Edgar suit. That sound like fun?
• Riddick gives this sort of speech to Jack in Pitch Black when she asks him how she can get cool eyes like that. It ultimately gets subverted through a Retcon in The Chronicles of Riddick (2004) as Jack goes off to do exactly what Riddick says... and finds out that he had been pulling her leg. The Escape from Butcher Bay game shows exactly how he got the eyes. It had nothing to do with any surgeon. However, the following games also suggest that he remembers it the way he does in the film as a sort of repressed memory, to explain the differing memory explanation.

• One of the plots in The Wild Life 1984 concerns a twelve year old who is obsessed with the Vietnam war and hangs out with a Vietnam veteran. Finally the vet snaps when the youngster talks about wishing he had been there.

Literature

• In Harry Potter, Hermione says she wishes she was able to see thestrals (winged horses that are only visible to people who have "seen death"). Harry rather bitterly points out that what she's implying is that she wishes she'd lost a loved one.
• In The Wolfhound the titular hero gets to listen to his young traveling companion boasting about how much fun it will be to finally slaughter the rival tribe after he's reunited with his highlander relatives. Sick of this, Wolfhound enquires if the kid has ever actually seen a settlement slaughtered to the last man. Unlike the kid, he has, and proceeds to share his memory thereof. This promptly makes the kid shut up and seriously re-evaluate his views.
  Wolfhound: ...Flies. Huge blue flies. The didn't even always lift off the bodies when we lifted them to carry to the grave.
• In The Wee Free Men Tiffany says she's always loved the idea of flying, and experienced witch Miss Tick asks her how she feels about the idea of wearing multiple layers of heavy canvas underwear so you don't freeze to death.

Live-Action TV

• Londo Mollari from Babylon 5 provides a lighter example when talking to Lennier about the rebirth ceremony and prayer:
  Londo: Ah, for a moment I was thinking women, drinking and debauchery. I forgot I was speaking to a Minbari. This, by you, is a good time, is it? What else?
  Lennier: You must tell someone a secret that you have never told anyone else before. And you must give away something that is of great value to you.
  Londo: Ah, how positively festive!
• Kamen Rider Ryuki has a particularly pointed example. After seeing one of the Riders transform, a young boy thinks it would be cool to become a Rider himself. Ren responds by letting the boy watch him fight a monster... and allowing it to beat the crap out of him (Ren).
• Teal'c explaining to a civilian how he got the brand on his forehead in Stargate SG-1. It involves a dull, slightly serrated knife and molten gold.
• A dark version comes up in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, when Derek Reese, a man from a Bad Future who has been fighting homicidal robots his entire life, acts as a sub for an ROTC camp. All the cadets know is that he's a veteran.
  Cadet: Got a lot of kills?
  Derek: Say again?
  Cadet: Kills, sir! I wanna go infantry as soon as I get out of here. Maybe Rangers, maybe Delta. Best of the best.
  Derek: Best of the best. Counting kills, like it's a game. Like it's just a game. I remember one particularly fun day. Guy in my squad got his stomach blasted open in a firefight. He spent six hours holding his own guts in. His buddy carried him on his back to the nearest aid station, just praying that someone could put the dumb son of a bitch together again. The game, Pyle, the game is played with your buddy's life! With the life of your squad! Your platoon. The game is played by you, on behalf of the whole damned Human race!

Music

• Subverted in "Alice's Restaurant":
  And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill, KILL, KILL." And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL," and he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL." And the sergeant came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy."
  ...
  Didn't feel too good about it.

Tabletop Games

• Sometimes asked in Paranoia. Of course, there the only proper answer is that yes, it does sound fun to you - after all, Happiness Is Mandatory.

Video Games

• Trilby from Chzo Mythos has an exchange like this with Siobhan in Trilby's Notes. She thinks going into the game's Dark World would be glamorous, but as he tries to tell her, it's not so much glamorous as it is utterly terrifying.
• In Chapter 2 of Deltarune, Susie, Noelle, and Berdly decide that their adventures in the Dark World are so fun and fulfilling that they're going to open another Dark Fountain so they can live there. Ralsei interrupts sharply and in a deadly serious tone explains exactly what is prophesied to happen if there are too many Dark Fountains. It will wake massive Titans who will devastate the land to start with. Then, darkness will blot out the sky, and it will turn the Darkners to stone. The Lightners will be left to fend for themselves in a desolate world of eternal night. He finishes this narration by saying "Is that your idea of paradise?"
• In Mass Effect, Commander Shepard can ask this of their Loony Fan Conrad Verner after he asks to become a Spectre. You do this while shoving a gun in his face.
  Shepard: This is what the Blitz felt like, Conrad! You like it?
• In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, the entire relationship between Snake and Raiden boils down to this. Raiden wants to be a cool action hero like Snake, even playing through his most famous missions in VR training. Snake dedicates almost every second of every interaction they have to showing him that being the protagonist of a Metal Gear game is not fun. And even when the not fun things happen to Raiden, it still doesn't get through. The ending of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots seemed to imply he'd finally learned and was ready to settle down with his family, but...
• One of the conversations in Poker Night at the Inventory has Strong Bad ask the Heavy Weapons Guy for "the most awesome story [he has] with plenty of super cool senseless violence," with Max listening in glee. Heavy tells them a depressing story about a sparrow a young boy killed in his assassination camp, and how he heard its last breath before burying it in the snow. After hearing that, the two seemed to no longer see the Heavy's profession as cool, and Tycho, usually being a sociopath himself, was brought to tears.

Webcomics

• Exterminatus Now:
  • Lothar Hex, the Trope Namer, is shown giving a fairly horrific one to a panda kid. Subverted in that the kid is as enthusiastic about bionics as ever, leading to Lothar kicking yet another innocent creature into oncoming traffic. Kick The Panda, anyone?
  • Happens earlier with Jamilla chewing the gang out for calling the Exterminatus "cool" rather than her definition of it, "horrifying".
    Jamilla: "How can you all be so flippant? You think Exterminatus is "cool"? All that terrible destructive power hanging over us in the sky. The power to reduce cities to ashes, mountains to dust. To annihilate entire populations in an eyeblink.^note And that's a watered-down version, the original Exterminatus being a Planet Killer. The power of Gods in the hands of mortals. It's terrifying. How can you possibly consider that cool?"
    Rogue: "We're guys?"
    Virus: "Yeah, how can we not?"
    Eastwood: "We just saw a really big explosion while riding in a flashy, high-performance aircraft- If you got your boobs out, we could all die happy right now."
    Lothar: "So this is what it feels like to be Jeremy Clarkson..."
  • The comic seems fond of subverting this one.

Web Original

• In the second season of the After Hours series, Spider-Man is a Hero-Worshipper to Batman. Bats eventually gets frustrated with it and demands to know why Parker has been "following me around like a lost puppy for the last few months" and Spidey gushes about how cool Batman is and how he wants to be friends with Bats. Batman launches into a speech about how he's a Broken Ace crossed with Knight in Sour Armor, emotionally stunted, and will probably Die Alone. At the end he asks if that sounds "cool" to Spidey. Spidey thinks it's the coolest thing that Batman has ever said to him.

Western Animation

• Futurama:
  • In a subversion, Bender threatens to hug all the orphans he has adopted "to see how they like it".
  • Also subverted in that "Futurama does not advocate the cool crime of shoplifting.''
• The New Scooby-Doo Movies episode "The Frickert Fracas" has Jonathan Winters commenting that Shaggy's ride on a grist mill's paddlewheel and being dunked in the water continuously looked like fun.
  Shaggy: Fun??? Did you think that was fun???
  Scooby (who endured two dunkings) No way!!
• South Park:
  • In the episode "Starvin' Marvin IN SPACE!", the boys are taken for questioning by a pair of The Men in Black in regards to Starvin' Marvin obtaining an alien spacecraft.
    Fed: Earlier this morning, an ethnic child was seen piloting an alien spacecraft over Chinese airspace.
    Cartman: Cool!
    Fed: Cool?! That ship has enough plutonium on board to vaporize a small city. Is that "cool"?
    Stan: Yeah!
  • Also in "Coon VS Coon and Friends", Kenny confronts Kyle when he says he thinks it'd be cool to not be able to die. Kenny goes into detail about his deaths and how they hurt!

Real Life

• Truth in Television: Those privates in Basic Training who claim they wanna join the Army to kill people and shoot guns have a VERY rude awakening coming if a Drill Sergeant actually gets to hear him say so in his presence.
  I said, I want to kill. Kill, kill, kill.... I want to be the killer, the number one killer, the best killer, to kill all the time. Send me anywhere, I'll kill everyone.... I spent fifteen days in the military hospital, in the mental ward, because apparently, the army isn't for killing, it's for peeling potatoes... (Source - in french)

---