application for realityshifted.
Player Name: Saffy
Player LJ: presea
Email and/or AIM: namine@feathery.org / inherits the sun
Timezone: PST (updated!!!! I am back in liberal land.)
Other Characters: Axel [d4] (smolderingdark), Emil [d2] Castagnier (pactum), Daisuke Niwa (insynch), and Asch the Bloody (promisedsomeone).
Character: Toki Wartooth
Fandom: Metalocalypse
Deviance: 1
Age: About 25.
Gender: Male (surprisingly)
Species: Human. Supposedly. Canon hints that the members of Dethklok are something superhuman/demonic, and he’s once called a messenger of death or something to that effect… but we’ll just stick to human for now.
Canon Used: The show mainly, with comic canon added in as I get a hold of it. Extras found on the DVDs and the records also count. There’s some fourth-walling stuff posted on the Myspace page, but Toki isn’t mentioned, unfortunately.
Appearance: Toki is more than six feet tall but unassumingly thin at first glance. He’s pale-skinned with bright blue eyes and brown hair falling straight down his back. He also has a whisker-like beard trim known as the Fu Manchu. He tends to wear bland blue shirts, plain black pants and boots. However, a second glance at Toki reveals that he’s actually the most well-built member of the band: lean, strong, and ripped. Literally, too. Beneath his clothes, he has a multitude of painful scars from whips and chains, mostly concentrated on his back but also on his chest, stomach, and arms. Despite this, he has a bit of a cutesy look to him. As long as his clothes are on.
This is Toki.
This is Toki, too.
This is also Toki.
And this!
Psychology:
Toki is a part of the most successful band to ever exist, and to an extent, he lives like it. Whatever he wants, he gets. Usually. Like most famous people, there’s a sense of entitlement. Though he is generally quiet during conferences, or ignored by the press in favor of the more sensationalist Skwisgaar, Toki is favored by younger people and children. He hates this fact, but does little to deter it, seeing as he enjoys DDR and making model airplanes too much to give them up. Toki is definitely the most openly-social of the band next to Murderface, articulating his thoughts clearly (if not for his terrible grasp of the English language) and actually doing things on his own, like shopping or going to parties. Like the band, he has a tendency to be extremely lazy and ignorant of the world. He doesn’t know how common people live, and every foray into the unknown of grocery stores, pawn shops, and ‘regular jackoff’ life becomes an exaggerated adventure. An adventure in which Toki and Skwisgaar bicker among themselves, the band starves, and they end up left out in the cold: hungry, desperate, and with puppy eyes never before seen on thirty-year old men.
Toki’s naivete is usually played for laughs; he once mistook a glowing strap-on for a codpiece, and his funny foreigner antics pop up frequently with or without fellow alien Skwisgaar. When played straight, Toki displays an amazing sense of childish optimism. He appreciates people and even forgives his father. He enjoys learning new things, playing video games, eating well and feeling well, helping his friends with their personal problems, and adopting animals. To name a few. And while he enjoys occasional casual sex, he’s nowhere near as promiscuous as the rest of the band. Unlike most of them, he actually looks forward to meeting someone he can spend the rest of his life with and having children. Though, with the events of ‘Fertilityklok’, he’s come to accept that casual relationships are just as acceptable. He already knew that ugly women as well as extremely hot women were crazy at the end of the second season.
Much to his bandmate’s chagrin, Toki can be very forceful about how things should be. In short: he’s a control freak. When met with resistance about the idea of a Secret Santa, he threw a fit and stormed out, determined to do what he wanted anyway. And he is very particular about snacks. He eats a lot of healthy food and expects everyone to enjoy the food he’s made for them, but no one wants it. Toki was placed in charge of snacks partly because when given actual government power, he used it to torment his underlings. Ordering someone to move his things around repeatedly actually turned him on. More importantly, this goes back to his childish and naïve ideals: he wants a perfect Christmas, a perfect family, and a perfect life, because he never had any of that contentment as a child.
He’s the youngest of the band and it shows. He tries to emulate them in a strange mixture of defiance and jealousy, and he’ll do what they say if it looks fun, like forming a new label with Murderface. He hates Skwisgaar and wants his position in the band so badly that he’ll try to make Skwisgaar quit, and yet Toki pretends to be him in a tribute band. Toki also imitates his way of speaking, going from low-pitched and understandable in the first few episodes to higher-pitched, manic Swedebabble. They even argue about it. “Stops copies me! Stops copies me!” Yeah, real mature there, guys. Toki seems to pick up a lot of knowledge from outside sources. If it’s not the band, it’s the internet or books. He is highly impressionable and eager to impress, and though he can be rather frightening, it makes him easy to forgive.
Frightening is definitely an apt term. Though he seems cute and happy on the outside, he can be terribly cynical just like the rest of the band, just as ignorant of death and the true measure of right and wrong. His darkness runs so much deeper. He’s not above getting physical, for example. He can easily throw the band around with his strength and he knows it, cheerfully hitting others or smacking into them for the attention. His band members are actually afraid of Toki, and for good reason: they think he’ll snap one day and kill them all.
These fears are not unfounded. Toki usually displays incredible patience with people (see: Rockzo), but he can also flip out at a moment’s notice over pretty much anything, throwing either a screaming fit or trying to actually kill someone. His mood swings are unpredictable and unsettling, especially if he’s short on insulin or sleep. Generally the most bloody, destructive anger is directed at people other than the band; Toki still manages to manhandle Pickles and Murderface fairly easily to scare them into submission. He is physically reckless, being the terror of many lamps in Charles’ office, but he is also self-destructive: he constantly feeds into the twisted co-dependent relationship he has with Dr. Rockzo and he drinks himself into a stupor whenever he finds alcohol. In one of Toki’s fantasy parts, he expresses that he hates his father but also himself, shocking considering his usual blissful ignorance.
The root of Toki’s destructive behavior and seeming disconnect from the real world is his abusive childhood at the hands of his parents. Being physically and mentally tortured left him bereft of joy, so he clung to what he could to bring himself contentment and company. This manifested in a desire to earn the attention and/or affection of pretty much everyone around him, otherwise he was to go into the ‘punishment hole’. Rather than dealing with his issues in a healthy way, Toki buries them behind a fragile façade of love and cheer (and sometimes drugs). Otherwise, he goes into a catatonic state and doesn’t say anything to anyone. He’s capable of moving around and functioning, but it’s still damn creepy.
Toki has his own share of nightmares. Most obviously, he has a paralyzing phobia of quarters. He hits his insane state when reminded of his awful past, and this triggers some kind of self-defense mechanism, anything from complete stunned silence to screaming angry things while on medication. He is also aware that everything he loves dies within a week: his guitar teacher, the cancer girl, his cat, his father, the baby troll he adopted. He kills everything he loves, and this weighs heavily on him, though he doesn’t always show it.
He is also a nervous wreck about certain things, even small things. He takes days off because he gets depressed about color. And, while he has talent, he fails utterly at showing it. When he finally gets the spotlight he wants, Toki’s shy side emerges and makes him break down. Even around the band, he can become this kind of neurotic. Nathan’s perfectionism and need to get things done the right way right now makes Toki panic, hit the wrong notes, and give up. Usually he flubs his parts so badly that Skwisgaar ends up re-recording them on the albums. He seems decent in concert, but overcoming stage fright is a daily struggle that his fellow guitarist picks up on when no one else does.
Despite his status as the most fucked up of the whole band, Toki has found true happiness with his strange little family. In them, he’s found a place to belong-- a place that will feed him and clothe him and entertain him. Though he gets frustrated when showing affection is met with resistance, he knows the truth in his ‘big dumb gay heart’: that he is a part of the band, no matter what happens, and it’s not quite the same without him. Similarly, without the band, Toki has nothing; he has no real family, no true friends, and no personal projects.
Other Skills/Abilities: Toki is extremely talented. He taught himself guitar and piano despite not knowing how to read music, and he’s the second fastest guitarist in the world-- beaten only by Skwisgaar, of course. He’s shown little proficiency on the show for other instruments, but that doesn’t keep him from singing in his dreams in broken English. Awesome! He is handy with Photoshop and Dreamweaver too, and could probably make a better Lisa Frank site than Lisa Frank. He can also engineer music. He read it in a book. It wasn't bad at all, actually.
Toki is possibly the healthiest member of the band physically. He exercises off-screen and attempts to eat healthy foods, often trying to influence the band to eat like him as well. Much to their disdain. They really hate it.
Ah, but Dethklok is not a normal band. Their concerts are amazing, yes, but also very accident-prone. Their fans tend to die in horrific ways. Same with their employees. In fact, most everything around Dethklok has a tendency to die, explode, or become mutilated beyond all recognition. Only people very close to the band seem immune to this curse, such as their manager and producer, and the band’s mothers (+ one grandmother), though the manager has died once and the producer lost his eyes… ahem.
The band as a whole displays some strange powers. They accidentally raised a troll out of a lake and destroyed Finland, for example. They also wiped out most of Florida with a hurricane they summoned, melted some ice caps, caused a volcano to erupt, nearly started World War III… It seems like disaster follows them wherever they go, their combined efforts forming some kind of ancestral, prophesied power to destroy the world. Also of note is that they seem to share dreams on a regular basis, but don’t find anything strange about it for long, except maybe an annoyance at Toki’s strange brightly-colored fantasies.
Their eyes have been shown glowing red on a few occasions, and every member of the band seems to be able to take a tremendous amount of physical abuse without dying or even being out of commission. Like drinking bleach and only getting indigestion. Or Toki’s teeth falling out due to excessive amounts of candy. Toki gets incredibly drunk along with the rest of the band, does an insane amount of drugs, and only suffers a bad hangover. The band went without sleep and food for a week and were still able to function. An exaggerated rock-and-roll lifestyle just can’t stop them.
Toki’s apocalyptic powers manifest by themselves, unfortunately. Everything he shows affection for dies an agonizing, terrible death. This is first shown by an adorable little cancer girl. Toki refused to see her for the whole episode, then at the end he accepted that he wanted to befriend her, and she died the moment he did. Months later, when taking guitar lessons, Toki expressed that his guitar teacher was his ‘father-friend’, and after only a week the man becomes terminally ill and dies in his arms. Then, when he visited his ailing abusive father and forgave him, Toki tried to grant his last wish. He screwed up and his father died not of the illness-- but falling several feet, breaking his bones and bleeding internally, being trapped under the ice, and then suffocating very slowly in freezing cold water. A cat he took in became terminal and died in a week. The Tribunal, Dethklok’s number one enablers, refer to him as a messenger of death-- and this is quite accurate.
Oh, and his spirit animal, the one associated with him and the one he loves most, is a rabbit.
Other Weaknesses: Toki is foreign. From Norway, in fact. He’s the youngest in the band and therefore has the worst English, presumably because he learned to speak it from listening to metal and hanging around the band. He has a tendency to mispronounce words, confuse simple things like piano & guitar lessons, and add consonants where they shouldn’t be. His early appearances with Dethklok show him being fairly articulate despite his childish language, but later on he picks up Skwisgaar’s way of speaking (hence the S’s, a Swedish thing).
Toki also canonically has diabetes. He develops it after a candy endorsement deal wrecks him, and has to take insulin every day or else he gets really sick. Luckily, a healthy exercise regimen and a special diet (when he remembers) keep him in good shape.
And yet, he tosses back alcohol too much, too often. Alcoholism is a physical disease as much as a mental one, and Toki’s the most self-destructive of the band with that. He does drugs on occasion but Pickles has him beat. He just doesn’t pace himself. Ever.
History:
(The creators are REALLY VAGUE about the band’s origins and how Toki joined the band… so some of this is headcanon.)
Toki was born some number of years ago to the Reverend Aslaug and Anja Wartooth, two people living in an abandoned village near Lillehammer, Norway. They were extremely proper and religious, but they were happy to have a child. However, it soon became clear to them that Toki was not normal. They discovered that he had some devil-like power and punished him for it, or at least believed that inflicting pain and excruciating work on him would purify him somehow. Whatever the cause, Toki spent the first ten or so years of his life doing manual labor. He dragged cords of wood uphill in the snow without a jacket, hefting rocks, that sort of thing. He was whipped at the first sign of weakness and tossed into an isolated hole with only a bed of straw and a handmade clown doll to keep him company.
Though he was homeschooled in his early life, he went to high school and had his first taste of actual society there, where he picked up on things such as metal and rebellion. It led him, at some point, to the town’s only music store: Drep Du Selv, which still sells records and promotes up-and-coming black metal bands. Toki found solace there and taught himself guitar and basic English. Turns out he was really good at guitar playing. English, not so much.
It didn’t stop him from being noticed by Dethklok, who decided after the departure of their first rhythm guitarist that they needed someone from the birthplace of black metal. After he joined the band, they rocketed to immense, unthinkable, seventh-largest-economy fame-- and he was raised as one of their own. Being only in his late teens at the time, he was eager for fame and a chance to escape, and the band was happy to have him.
Everything they’ve since then has been larger than life. They recorded metal for fish. They summoned a lake troll on Finland. They destroyed Florida completely by accidentally summoning a hurricane. The band’s families came over and tried to record a metal album. Ravenwood betrayed the Tribunal and died for it, and General Crozier paid with his mind. Toki’s dad caught the cancer and Toki murdered him by accident.
Toward the end of this five year stretch of chaos, the Revengencers also attacked Dethklok and managed to kill Charles. Or he pretended to be dead. Canon is vague on this point. Whatever the case, it meant that he was gone for nine months and left Nathan in charge of the band. The band had terrible spending habits during that time and went broke (and Toki was forced to work in a strip club oh god). They were forced to renegotiate the terms of their contract with their asshole label, and almost signed away their souls, but Charles walked in at the last moment and allowed the show to go on.
After that, life resumed as usual, at least for them. Dethklok catered to fans with their approval of tribute bands (one of which Toki was in). Toki adopted a cat and it died within a week as usual. Doctor Rockzo ruined Christmas for everyone. Skwisgaar left the band for about five minutes and Toki loved it, but then he came back and Toki was disappointed and strangely relieved. Then, Toki and Murderface sued Dethklok for residuals, which Toki didn’t even understand, and they formed their own crappy label. Nathan, Pickles, and Skwisgaar reluctantly took them back when their music sounded too happy, and all was forgiven.
In short: still being stupid and destructive, with the Tribunal watching every move and the Revengencers quiet while they recover after their losses.
Canon Point: After “Dethsiduals”, where Toki and Murderface sue for more credit with the band’s songs and fail. And Toki basically forgets the whole thing since he only did it ‘cause Murderface asked him to.
Reality Description:
Toki’s reality is a little bit skewed. On the surface, it appears to be like a normal present-day Earth. However, unicorns and lake trolls exist, the world economy depends on the Dethklok in-universe fandom, and the band members themselves seem to have odd apocalyptic powers. Dethklok has access to incredibly advanced technology, such as a flying fortress, hoverdrums able to cruise across Mozambique, and records recorded on water. Among other things. Dethklok is the richest, most successful band in world history and so pretty much anything and everything is at their disposal.
Dethklok spends most of their time inside the Mordhaus fortress, which used to be part of a country of its own called Mordland (until it took off at the end of S2). Mordhaus is bigger than any medieval castle and is staffed by hooded executioner-looking people called Klokateers. This is where Toki and the rest of the band spend their time when not on tour. Mordhaus has everything from huge bedrooms to a hot tub in the middle of the floor to walls and walls of video games to dungeons reserved for torturing criminals against Dethklok… and much much more. Yeah, it’s big.
Toki himself is actually pretty unhinged. His dreams look like something out of a Lisa Frank trapperkeeper so that might have some effect on things important to him (random talking fish, anyone?). Most of the time he’s okay, but around Norway I suspect things might become unusually dark against the snow, generally bereft of color and people, and full of torture equipment. And in a way completely different from Mordhaus.
There are loads and loads of characters in Dethklok. Fortunately, a few of them are still alive.
Charles Foster Ofdensen is the band’s manager and holds such a special place in his heart that Toki actually keeps a picture of him after he dies. And cares deeply about what he thinks, apparently. Nathan is the leader/vocalist of Dethklok and acts sort of like a backup parental figure to the band, Toki included. Nathan keeps him in line, but doesn’t scold Toki unless he really needs to. He knows the kid is fucked up. Pickles is the drummer and multitalented. He can also hold his booze and drugs very well. And he gets chicks! He’s pretty chill, except when he’s not, but Toki isn’t that fazed by it. He cares about his opinion, though. Murderface is the other member of the band most ignored. He does a lot of stupid, rude, and disgusting shit to get attention. He’s also the first person Toki goes to when he has girl troubles… for some reason. Toki enjoys trolling him all the same. Last but not least there’s Skwisgaar, who is older, professional, and has the looks of a supermodel. Toki and Skwisgaar bicker practically all the time. Toki seems to enjoy bringing him down to his level, but it’s a good-natured sort of hate. Skwisgaar regards him like a retarded little brother.
Dick Knubbler is notable as the band’s producer, originally a spy but brainwashed into loving the band with one listen of their record. He’s gotten used to seeing Toki flail and fail under the pressure of recording. But he’s a cool guy, and calls Murderface and the others ‘babe’, so Toki picked that up in his speech. Twinkletits (that’s twink-let-its) is the band’s psychologist, who somehow still works for them even after having his arms ripped off by their wolf security. Relentless and a little bit psychotic himself, he sometimes makes things worse. But hey, mind-numbing drugs!
Toki’s best friend in all the world that also happens to be a pedophile and complete scum of the earth is Doctor Rockzo, the rock and roll clown! (He does cocaine.) He’s a washed up ex-rock star reminiscent of Gene Simmons and Van Halen in one unholy mix. He was clean for a very brief period before delving right back into drugs and causing havoc. He gets tossed into jail frequently and calls Toki to bail him out. While annoyed with constantly being betrayed and used, Toki always gives in and tries to help him, even at his own expense. Or the band’s.
Toki’s only family consists of his mother, Anja Wartooth, who presumably lives alone in Norway but keeps in contact with the rest of the band’s mother. His abusive reverend father is dead as of season 2, good riddance.
Dethklok cannot escape the attention of those who have the world’s interest at stake, or at least on the surface. A committee of strange and powerful people from all over the world formed to watch and sabotage Dethklok as needed, known as the Tribunal. They meet in secret and watch badly-photoshopped news footage while contemplating what to do. The leader, Selatcia, is a quiet but firm and possibly demonic man who desires to make Dethklok the bringers of his metalocalypse. He’s already brainwashed one of the members and killed another. The main purpose of the Tribunal is to keep the public dumb and sheepy.
The other organization trying to stop Dethklok is made of people who’ve been wronged by the band personally, the Revengencers. One of them is the surviving obese half of the Jomfru brothers, Edgar, who blackmailed the band and paid for it dearly. He’s the brains. The brawn of the operation is the Metal-Masked Assassin, whose brother was a spy killed while trying to subvert Dethklok. There’s also a silent nameless teenager who was tortured over software pirating.
Player LJ: presea
Email and/or AIM: namine@feathery.org / inherits the sun
Timezone: PST (updated!!!! I am back in liberal land.)
Other Characters: Axel [d4] (smolderingdark), Emil [d2] Castagnier (pactum), Daisuke Niwa (insynch), and Asch the Bloody (promisedsomeone).
Character: Toki Wartooth
Fandom: Metalocalypse
Deviance: 1
Age: About 25.
Gender: Male (surprisingly)
Species: Human. Supposedly. Canon hints that the members of Dethklok are something superhuman/demonic, and he’s once called a messenger of death or something to that effect… but we’ll just stick to human for now.
Canon Used: The show mainly, with comic canon added in as I get a hold of it. Extras found on the DVDs and the records also count. There’s some fourth-walling stuff posted on the Myspace page, but Toki isn’t mentioned, unfortunately.
Appearance: Toki is more than six feet tall but unassumingly thin at first glance. He’s pale-skinned with bright blue eyes and brown hair falling straight down his back. He also has a whisker-like beard trim known as the Fu Manchu. He tends to wear bland blue shirts, plain black pants and boots. However, a second glance at Toki reveals that he’s actually the most well-built member of the band: lean, strong, and ripped. Literally, too. Beneath his clothes, he has a multitude of painful scars from whips and chains, mostly concentrated on his back but also on his chest, stomach, and arms. Despite this, he has a bit of a cutesy look to him. As long as his clothes are on.
This is Toki.
This is Toki, too.
This is also Toki.
And this!
Psychology:
Toki is a part of the most successful band to ever exist, and to an extent, he lives like it. Whatever he wants, he gets. Usually. Like most famous people, there’s a sense of entitlement. Though he is generally quiet during conferences, or ignored by the press in favor of the more sensationalist Skwisgaar, Toki is favored by younger people and children. He hates this fact, but does little to deter it, seeing as he enjoys DDR and making model airplanes too much to give them up. Toki is definitely the most openly-social of the band next to Murderface, articulating his thoughts clearly (if not for his terrible grasp of the English language) and actually doing things on his own, like shopping or going to parties. Like the band, he has a tendency to be extremely lazy and ignorant of the world. He doesn’t know how common people live, and every foray into the unknown of grocery stores, pawn shops, and ‘regular jackoff’ life becomes an exaggerated adventure. An adventure in which Toki and Skwisgaar bicker among themselves, the band starves, and they end up left out in the cold: hungry, desperate, and with puppy eyes never before seen on thirty-year old men.
Toki’s naivete is usually played for laughs; he once mistook a glowing strap-on for a codpiece, and his funny foreigner antics pop up frequently with or without fellow alien Skwisgaar. When played straight, Toki displays an amazing sense of childish optimism. He appreciates people and even forgives his father. He enjoys learning new things, playing video games, eating well and feeling well, helping his friends with their personal problems, and adopting animals. To name a few. And while he enjoys occasional casual sex, he’s nowhere near as promiscuous as the rest of the band. Unlike most of them, he actually looks forward to meeting someone he can spend the rest of his life with and having children. Though, with the events of ‘Fertilityklok’, he’s come to accept that casual relationships are just as acceptable. He already knew that ugly women as well as extremely hot women were crazy at the end of the second season.
Much to his bandmate’s chagrin, Toki can be very forceful about how things should be. In short: he’s a control freak. When met with resistance about the idea of a Secret Santa, he threw a fit and stormed out, determined to do what he wanted anyway. And he is very particular about snacks. He eats a lot of healthy food and expects everyone to enjoy the food he’s made for them, but no one wants it. Toki was placed in charge of snacks partly because when given actual government power, he used it to torment his underlings. Ordering someone to move his things around repeatedly actually turned him on. More importantly, this goes back to his childish and naïve ideals: he wants a perfect Christmas, a perfect family, and a perfect life, because he never had any of that contentment as a child.
He’s the youngest of the band and it shows. He tries to emulate them in a strange mixture of defiance and jealousy, and he’ll do what they say if it looks fun, like forming a new label with Murderface. He hates Skwisgaar and wants his position in the band so badly that he’ll try to make Skwisgaar quit, and yet Toki pretends to be him in a tribute band. Toki also imitates his way of speaking, going from low-pitched and understandable in the first few episodes to higher-pitched, manic Swedebabble. They even argue about it. “Stops copies me! Stops copies me!” Yeah, real mature there, guys. Toki seems to pick up a lot of knowledge from outside sources. If it’s not the band, it’s the internet or books. He is highly impressionable and eager to impress, and though he can be rather frightening, it makes him easy to forgive.
Frightening is definitely an apt term. Though he seems cute and happy on the outside, he can be terribly cynical just like the rest of the band, just as ignorant of death and the true measure of right and wrong. His darkness runs so much deeper. He’s not above getting physical, for example. He can easily throw the band around with his strength and he knows it, cheerfully hitting others or smacking into them for the attention. His band members are actually afraid of Toki, and for good reason: they think he’ll snap one day and kill them all.
These fears are not unfounded. Toki usually displays incredible patience with people (see: Rockzo), but he can also flip out at a moment’s notice over pretty much anything, throwing either a screaming fit or trying to actually kill someone. His mood swings are unpredictable and unsettling, especially if he’s short on insulin or sleep. Generally the most bloody, destructive anger is directed at people other than the band; Toki still manages to manhandle Pickles and Murderface fairly easily to scare them into submission. He is physically reckless, being the terror of many lamps in Charles’ office, but he is also self-destructive: he constantly feeds into the twisted co-dependent relationship he has with Dr. Rockzo and he drinks himself into a stupor whenever he finds alcohol. In one of Toki’s fantasy parts, he expresses that he hates his father but also himself, shocking considering his usual blissful ignorance.
The root of Toki’s destructive behavior and seeming disconnect from the real world is his abusive childhood at the hands of his parents. Being physically and mentally tortured left him bereft of joy, so he clung to what he could to bring himself contentment and company. This manifested in a desire to earn the attention and/or affection of pretty much everyone around him, otherwise he was to go into the ‘punishment hole’. Rather than dealing with his issues in a healthy way, Toki buries them behind a fragile façade of love and cheer (and sometimes drugs). Otherwise, he goes into a catatonic state and doesn’t say anything to anyone. He’s capable of moving around and functioning, but it’s still damn creepy.
Toki has his own share of nightmares. Most obviously, he has a paralyzing phobia of quarters. He hits his insane state when reminded of his awful past, and this triggers some kind of self-defense mechanism, anything from complete stunned silence to screaming angry things while on medication. He is also aware that everything he loves dies within a week: his guitar teacher, the cancer girl, his cat, his father, the baby troll he adopted. He kills everything he loves, and this weighs heavily on him, though he doesn’t always show it.
He is also a nervous wreck about certain things, even small things. He takes days off because he gets depressed about color. And, while he has talent, he fails utterly at showing it. When he finally gets the spotlight he wants, Toki’s shy side emerges and makes him break down. Even around the band, he can become this kind of neurotic. Nathan’s perfectionism and need to get things done the right way right now makes Toki panic, hit the wrong notes, and give up. Usually he flubs his parts so badly that Skwisgaar ends up re-recording them on the albums. He seems decent in concert, but overcoming stage fright is a daily struggle that his fellow guitarist picks up on when no one else does.
Despite his status as the most fucked up of the whole band, Toki has found true happiness with his strange little family. In them, he’s found a place to belong-- a place that will feed him and clothe him and entertain him. Though he gets frustrated when showing affection is met with resistance, he knows the truth in his ‘big dumb gay heart’: that he is a part of the band, no matter what happens, and it’s not quite the same without him. Similarly, without the band, Toki has nothing; he has no real family, no true friends, and no personal projects.
Other Skills/Abilities: Toki is extremely talented. He taught himself guitar and piano despite not knowing how to read music, and he’s the second fastest guitarist in the world-- beaten only by Skwisgaar, of course. He’s shown little proficiency on the show for other instruments, but that doesn’t keep him from singing in his dreams in broken English. Awesome! He is handy with Photoshop and Dreamweaver too, and could probably make a better Lisa Frank site than Lisa Frank. He can also engineer music. He read it in a book. It wasn't bad at all, actually.
Toki is possibly the healthiest member of the band physically. He exercises off-screen and attempts to eat healthy foods, often trying to influence the band to eat like him as well. Much to their disdain. They really hate it.
Ah, but Dethklok is not a normal band. Their concerts are amazing, yes, but also very accident-prone. Their fans tend to die in horrific ways. Same with their employees. In fact, most everything around Dethklok has a tendency to die, explode, or become mutilated beyond all recognition. Only people very close to the band seem immune to this curse, such as their manager and producer, and the band’s mothers (+ one grandmother), though the manager has died once and the producer lost his eyes… ahem.
The band as a whole displays some strange powers. They accidentally raised a troll out of a lake and destroyed Finland, for example. They also wiped out most of Florida with a hurricane they summoned, melted some ice caps, caused a volcano to erupt, nearly started World War III… It seems like disaster follows them wherever they go, their combined efforts forming some kind of ancestral, prophesied power to destroy the world. Also of note is that they seem to share dreams on a regular basis, but don’t find anything strange about it for long, except maybe an annoyance at Toki’s strange brightly-colored fantasies.
Their eyes have been shown glowing red on a few occasions, and every member of the band seems to be able to take a tremendous amount of physical abuse without dying or even being out of commission. Like drinking bleach and only getting indigestion. Or Toki’s teeth falling out due to excessive amounts of candy. Toki gets incredibly drunk along with the rest of the band, does an insane amount of drugs, and only suffers a bad hangover. The band went without sleep and food for a week and were still able to function. An exaggerated rock-and-roll lifestyle just can’t stop them.
Toki’s apocalyptic powers manifest by themselves, unfortunately. Everything he shows affection for dies an agonizing, terrible death. This is first shown by an adorable little cancer girl. Toki refused to see her for the whole episode, then at the end he accepted that he wanted to befriend her, and she died the moment he did. Months later, when taking guitar lessons, Toki expressed that his guitar teacher was his ‘father-friend’, and after only a week the man becomes terminally ill and dies in his arms. Then, when he visited his ailing abusive father and forgave him, Toki tried to grant his last wish. He screwed up and his father died not of the illness-- but falling several feet, breaking his bones and bleeding internally, being trapped under the ice, and then suffocating very slowly in freezing cold water. A cat he took in became terminal and died in a week. The Tribunal, Dethklok’s number one enablers, refer to him as a messenger of death-- and this is quite accurate.
Oh, and his spirit animal, the one associated with him and the one he loves most, is a rabbit.
Other Weaknesses: Toki is foreign. From Norway, in fact. He’s the youngest in the band and therefore has the worst English, presumably because he learned to speak it from listening to metal and hanging around the band. He has a tendency to mispronounce words, confuse simple things like piano & guitar lessons, and add consonants where they shouldn’t be. His early appearances with Dethklok show him being fairly articulate despite his childish language, but later on he picks up Skwisgaar’s way of speaking (hence the S’s, a Swedish thing).
Toki also canonically has diabetes. He develops it after a candy endorsement deal wrecks him, and has to take insulin every day or else he gets really sick. Luckily, a healthy exercise regimen and a special diet (when he remembers) keep him in good shape.
And yet, he tosses back alcohol too much, too often. Alcoholism is a physical disease as much as a mental one, and Toki’s the most self-destructive of the band with that. He does drugs on occasion but Pickles has him beat. He just doesn’t pace himself. Ever.
History:
(The creators are REALLY VAGUE about the band’s origins and how Toki joined the band… so some of this is headcanon.)
Toki was born some number of years ago to the Reverend Aslaug and Anja Wartooth, two people living in an abandoned village near Lillehammer, Norway. They were extremely proper and religious, but they were happy to have a child. However, it soon became clear to them that Toki was not normal. They discovered that he had some devil-like power and punished him for it, or at least believed that inflicting pain and excruciating work on him would purify him somehow. Whatever the cause, Toki spent the first ten or so years of his life doing manual labor. He dragged cords of wood uphill in the snow without a jacket, hefting rocks, that sort of thing. He was whipped at the first sign of weakness and tossed into an isolated hole with only a bed of straw and a handmade clown doll to keep him company.
Though he was homeschooled in his early life, he went to high school and had his first taste of actual society there, where he picked up on things such as metal and rebellion. It led him, at some point, to the town’s only music store: Drep Du Selv, which still sells records and promotes up-and-coming black metal bands. Toki found solace there and taught himself guitar and basic English. Turns out he was really good at guitar playing. English, not so much.
It didn’t stop him from being noticed by Dethklok, who decided after the departure of their first rhythm guitarist that they needed someone from the birthplace of black metal. After he joined the band, they rocketed to immense, unthinkable, seventh-largest-economy fame-- and he was raised as one of their own. Being only in his late teens at the time, he was eager for fame and a chance to escape, and the band was happy to have him.
Everything they’ve since then has been larger than life. They recorded metal for fish. They summoned a lake troll on Finland. They destroyed Florida completely by accidentally summoning a hurricane. The band’s families came over and tried to record a metal album. Ravenwood betrayed the Tribunal and died for it, and General Crozier paid with his mind. Toki’s dad caught the cancer and Toki murdered him by accident.
Toward the end of this five year stretch of chaos, the Revengencers also attacked Dethklok and managed to kill Charles. Or he pretended to be dead. Canon is vague on this point. Whatever the case, it meant that he was gone for nine months and left Nathan in charge of the band. The band had terrible spending habits during that time and went broke (and Toki was forced to work in a strip club oh god). They were forced to renegotiate the terms of their contract with their asshole label, and almost signed away their souls, but Charles walked in at the last moment and allowed the show to go on.
After that, life resumed as usual, at least for them. Dethklok catered to fans with their approval of tribute bands (one of which Toki was in). Toki adopted a cat and it died within a week as usual. Doctor Rockzo ruined Christmas for everyone. Skwisgaar left the band for about five minutes and Toki loved it, but then he came back and Toki was disappointed and strangely relieved. Then, Toki and Murderface sued Dethklok for residuals, which Toki didn’t even understand, and they formed their own crappy label. Nathan, Pickles, and Skwisgaar reluctantly took them back when their music sounded too happy, and all was forgiven.
In short: still being stupid and destructive, with the Tribunal watching every move and the Revengencers quiet while they recover after their losses.
Canon Point: After “Dethsiduals”, where Toki and Murderface sue for more credit with the band’s songs and fail. And Toki basically forgets the whole thing since he only did it ‘cause Murderface asked him to.
Reality Description:
Toki’s reality is a little bit skewed. On the surface, it appears to be like a normal present-day Earth. However, unicorns and lake trolls exist, the world economy depends on the Dethklok in-universe fandom, and the band members themselves seem to have odd apocalyptic powers. Dethklok has access to incredibly advanced technology, such as a flying fortress, hoverdrums able to cruise across Mozambique, and records recorded on water. Among other things. Dethklok is the richest, most successful band in world history and so pretty much anything and everything is at their disposal.
Dethklok spends most of their time inside the Mordhaus fortress, which used to be part of a country of its own called Mordland (until it took off at the end of S2). Mordhaus is bigger than any medieval castle and is staffed by hooded executioner-looking people called Klokateers. This is where Toki and the rest of the band spend their time when not on tour. Mordhaus has everything from huge bedrooms to a hot tub in the middle of the floor to walls and walls of video games to dungeons reserved for torturing criminals against Dethklok… and much much more. Yeah, it’s big.
Toki himself is actually pretty unhinged. His dreams look like something out of a Lisa Frank trapperkeeper so that might have some effect on things important to him (random talking fish, anyone?). Most of the time he’s okay, but around Norway I suspect things might become unusually dark against the snow, generally bereft of color and people, and full of torture equipment. And in a way completely different from Mordhaus.
There are loads and loads of characters in Dethklok. Fortunately, a few of them are still alive.
Charles Foster Ofdensen is the band’s manager and holds such a special place in his heart that Toki actually keeps a picture of him after he dies. And cares deeply about what he thinks, apparently. Nathan is the leader/vocalist of Dethklok and acts sort of like a backup parental figure to the band, Toki included. Nathan keeps him in line, but doesn’t scold Toki unless he really needs to. He knows the kid is fucked up. Pickles is the drummer and multitalented. He can also hold his booze and drugs very well. And he gets chicks! He’s pretty chill, except when he’s not, but Toki isn’t that fazed by it. He cares about his opinion, though. Murderface is the other member of the band most ignored. He does a lot of stupid, rude, and disgusting shit to get attention. He’s also the first person Toki goes to when he has girl troubles… for some reason. Toki enjoys trolling him all the same. Last but not least there’s Skwisgaar, who is older, professional, and has the looks of a supermodel. Toki and Skwisgaar bicker practically all the time. Toki seems to enjoy bringing him down to his level, but it’s a good-natured sort of hate. Skwisgaar regards him like a retarded little brother.
Dick Knubbler is notable as the band’s producer, originally a spy but brainwashed into loving the band with one listen of their record. He’s gotten used to seeing Toki flail and fail under the pressure of recording. But he’s a cool guy, and calls Murderface and the others ‘babe’, so Toki picked that up in his speech. Twinkletits (that’s twink-let-its) is the band’s psychologist, who somehow still works for them even after having his arms ripped off by their wolf security. Relentless and a little bit psychotic himself, he sometimes makes things worse. But hey, mind-numbing drugs!
Toki’s best friend in all the world that also happens to be a pedophile and complete scum of the earth is Doctor Rockzo, the rock and roll clown! (He does cocaine.) He’s a washed up ex-rock star reminiscent of Gene Simmons and Van Halen in one unholy mix. He was clean for a very brief period before delving right back into drugs and causing havoc. He gets tossed into jail frequently and calls Toki to bail him out. While annoyed with constantly being betrayed and used, Toki always gives in and tries to help him, even at his own expense. Or the band’s.
Toki’s only family consists of his mother, Anja Wartooth, who presumably lives alone in Norway but keeps in contact with the rest of the band’s mother. His abusive reverend father is dead as of season 2, good riddance.
Dethklok cannot escape the attention of those who have the world’s interest at stake, or at least on the surface. A committee of strange and powerful people from all over the world formed to watch and sabotage Dethklok as needed, known as the Tribunal. They meet in secret and watch badly-photoshopped news footage while contemplating what to do. The leader, Selatcia, is a quiet but firm and possibly demonic man who desires to make Dethklok the bringers of his metalocalypse. He’s already brainwashed one of the members and killed another. The main purpose of the Tribunal is to keep the public dumb and sheepy.
The other organization trying to stop Dethklok is made of people who’ve been wronged by the band personally, the Revengencers. One of them is the surviving obese half of the Jomfru brothers, Edgar, who blackmailed the band and paid for it dearly. He’s the brains. The brawn of the operation is the Metal-Masked Assassin, whose brother was a spy killed while trying to subvert Dethklok. There’s also a silent nameless teenager who was tortured over software pirating.