On March 17th, 2015, twenty one pilots announced their fourth album Blurryface. As a part of its marketing, a character was introduced to the Clique, also named Blurryface.
Despite being mostly present during his namesake era (lasting from March 2015 to July 2017) he has persisted to the present day.
I found TOP in 2018, just missing much of Blurry's activity by a year, but since I learned about him he quickly become my favorite character of all time, from any media ever.
What's a Blurryface anywa-*dies*
Blurryface is, at his core, a manifestation of a person's insecurities, doubts, anxieties, depression, fears, and other psychological and/or mental issues. He is a being born and comprised of sheer emotion.
While it is true that everyone has their own version of this type of entity, this one is Tyler Joseph's. This puts Blurryface in a very interesting gray area of existence in my mind, being simultaneously entirely fictional and yet very, very real.
Physically, Blurry has several appearances that he changes between. He can be a shadowy figure with nine white and red circles for a face, a mimic of Tyler with his signature black hands and neck, and occasionally with red irises, a dog, a deep and unsettling voice, and probably many more forms we aren't aware of.
Blurryface is a highly unstable and volatile creature, being driven by pure emotion. He relies heavily on threatening others to achieve his goals, and overall acts very strange, both in his personality and movements.
He is highly protective over his identity, despising those who try to imitate him and repeatedly insisting he is the only Blurryface. He also hates the Clique, which is really funny to me. Blurry is also seemingly fond of forests, having livestreamed from them multiple times.
Blurry's markings, applied in real life as paint, represent areas of high insecurity. In Tyler's case, the neck representing a suffocating feeling and the hands indicating insecurities revolving around the things he creates. Blurry's eyes and voice are a bit more mysterious, with no solid explanation being given to them either than to possibly make a statement about the difference between the two.
Blurryface exists to, in Tyler's words, give his insecurities and fears a name, a face, and a seat at the table. In this respect, he serves the function of a necessary antagonist for a story being told, but I don't see him as evil.
Blurryface has been my number one blorbo and favorite little guy for eight years now. I also think he's a barely functional repulsive garbage entity, shambling his way through existence while having every possible problem thrown at him.
I think it's because Blurry is such an interesting character to me. He's got a pretty unique concept behind him and I love the way it's been executed (even if I wish they'd gone further but he got put in jail because people got scared).
I love his design, his colors, his personality, everything about him. I mean, look how much I draw and talk about this freak. My brain has been consumed by this thing and is full of goop and it's his fault. :)
I love Blurryface. It's a no skip album for me and overall one of my favorite albums ever. The instrumentals oh my god I love them so much. Polarize, The Judge, and Hometown my beloveds.
Blurry also appears as a deep voice in the backing vocals throughout the album, getting main vocal privileges in Stressed Out and Fairly Local.
Pretty much everything we know about Blurryface comes from his Twitter account, created on January 15th, 2015. It tells us much about this entity and how he acts, being a primary source for everything we know about his personality and tendencies.
The account was used in the Blurryface era for a variety of things, notably indicating releases for songs, music videos, and tours, "leaking" songs (and notably the entire Blurryface album at one point). It was also used by Blurry to yell at people or to scream into the void. He's posted weird images, videos, and plenty of odd statements over the years. He livestreamed from the now-defunct Periscope, too (he did an entire stream just blocking people on Twitter). The account is still used but far less now.
Blurryface's tweets are easily identifiable because of his strange typing habits. He almost always writes in all caps with odd spacing and the occasional spelling mistake. A full archive can be found here. Here's a few of my personal favorites:
5. This was the first of several tweets of him screaming at people to stop putting his name on things.
4. Blurryface's attempt at drawing the Emotional Roadshow promotional image is really funny to me he's trying his best.
3. This isn't technically a tweet but I love his little -BF signature so much and once again it's just Blurry yelling at people so they pay attention to him.
2. Blurry's only direct interaction with Tyler on Twitter, and it's hilarious. This happened after Blurry leaked the Blurryface album and the "them" refers to the songs on it. Blurry hates his own album.
1. This is also from the time when he leaked Blurryface. This thing is so fed up with everybody and hates us all so much and that's the funniest thing ever to me. I made a bracelet of this tweet and I wear it all the time.
Whenever we see Blurryface on stage or in a music videø, it's Tyler playing the part. Because of that, I've seen many people have problems with correctly identifying Blurryface when we see him, confusing him for Tyler or even Clancy.
Both Blurryface and Clancy have black hands and a black neck. Sometimes Blurryface has red irises, but they can also be brown whilst being in a human vessel. So it's unreliable most of the time.
More reliable than that is Blurryface's red beanie that in recent years has become the true signifier of his presence. Blurry also moves strangely, stalking around the stage, and speaks in a noticeable way. In the Blurryface era, he'd have a very distinct accent, playing up Tyler's own. Since 2023, he sings in a much angrier and raspier version of Tyler's voice.
| Black markings | Red eyes | Red Beanie | Mask | Accent | Movements | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tyler | X | X | X | X | X | X |
| Blurryface | Y | Y | Y | X | Y | Y |
| Clancy | Y | Y | X | Y | X | Y |
