Blur

From Candypedia
Blur
GenderMale
Age8
BirthdayJuly 12, 2000 (Cancer)
SpeciesBird
FamilyMike (Owner)
DebutGaming Rivalry, page 1
May 5, 2006 (2006-05-05)

Blur is a small blue bird with a very large mouth, and the one member of Lucy’s pet menagerie who officially belongs to Mike. He has no clear memory of life before Lily dragged him out from under a burning tree. He got his name from Yashy after complaining that his mind was all a blur, a christening he loudly rejected before answering to it in the very next panel. For years he divided his time between the two households, losing at cards and passing crude remarks about when Mike and Lucy were going to get on with it. But when Lucy’s pets left Roseville, he went with them.

Personality

Blur enthusiastically backs Yashy’s worst suggestion in Blurry Memories.

Blur has a comment for everything and very little interest in the consequences. He can greet Mike with a cup of tea and a sunny good-morning, then spend his time trading insults with Yashy over cards. Between games he offers running commentary on Mike and Lucy’s love lives, which nobody asked for. He is fearless with a quip and quick to panic when trouble turns real, and over the years he has been kicked into the sky, hit with a book and embedded in a ceiling for his trouble. As for the missing memory, he would rather you didn’t bring it up. He has decided he’s doing fine without it.

His favourite target is whatever is or isn’t going on between Mike and Lucy. On his very first page, Yashy tells the squabbling pair that nobody is interested in watching them make out, and Blur corrects her with a flat “I am.” before suggesting “Oh, just perform coitus already.” Mike kicks him into the stratosphere for it.[1] He cheers on Yashy’s make-up-sex line in Blurry Memories and takes a book to the beak.[2] The odd thing is that, in between the vulgarity, he is right about them. Minutes after the book incident he grumbles that all the two of them ever do is squabble, and that they forget they’re friends sometimes.[2] Not many people in the comic put it that plainly.

He also has a habit of arriving mid-scene with exactly the wrong thing to say. In Dinner Time he squeezes through Lucy’s window mid-meal to complain about somebody’s mushy phone baby talk, realises Lucy is right there, and produces the cover story “You know.. He’s a baby.”[3][4]

At games he has two settings, sore loser and smug winner. He will spend a whole day losing to Lily and then storm over to Lucy’s because he needs a beatable opponent.[5] Yashy can beat him too, and his response to her taunts is a furious “SHUT UP!!”[6] When he does win, he is perfectly happy to reduce her to tears by doing it too often.[7] Even Yashy’s daydreams cast him gloating over a game.[8]

Put him near anything dangerous and he loses his nerve. He takes one look at the waves in Arrival and leaves Yashy standing alone on her bodyboard.[9] On the island he shrieks at a stranger in town rather than explaining the emergency,[10] and later flees a wild animal so blindly that he and Chirpy bowl the entire rescue party off a cliff.[11] He is squeamish, clinging to Lily and begging someone to get the image of Paulo and Tess out of his head.[12] He can be gentle, too, volunteering to teach Chirpy to fly[13] and checking on a face-down Katie at Field Day.[14]

A name meant as a joke becomes the one thing Blur cannot bear to hear.

The amnesia is the one subject that gets under his feathers. Call him mentally damaged and he scowls, blushes, and insists he’s only hazy and still remembers some things.[2] Lucy read him as a bit of a loner on the day he woke up,[15] which is a funny thing to say about a bird who later sobs at the thought of being home alone all day once school starts.[16] When Lily presses him gently, he admits it would be nice to know who he was, but that he’s “kinda happy with what I have now”, adding that trees don’t come with air conditioning.[17]

Appearance

Blur’s tiny wings are perfectly serviceable when the game calls for one more card.

Blur is a small blue bird, and small is the operative word. Mike can catch him in one hand,[15] wake up clutching him in his arms,[18] and even transport him to a party without noticing he’s hidden inside his beanie.[19] He sheds blue feathers, which is how Mike learns he has gone.[20] His wings double as hands well enough to hold a fan of playing cards, an Uno card, or a party invitation.[1][21][22] He is quick enough in the air to dodge a hurled game controller, which is more or less how he got his name.[13] A thrown book bends his beak clean upward in Blurry Memories.[2]

Veronica has said that his design comes from the generic bird drawings in an Ecuadorian colouring book she saw when she was five, rather than from any video game.[23] He does dress up on occasion: a lobster costume for Mike’s Birthday,[24] and devil horns with a tiny pitchfork one Halloween.[25]

Significant events

As shown in Blurry Memories, Blur joins the household in the autumn of the gang’s seventh-grade year.[26] Lily pulls an unconscious bird from under a lightning-struck tree, Mike carries him to Lucy’s, and the bandaged stranger wakes with no memory at all.[27][28] Mike takes him home, and Yashy gives him his name on a later visit to Lucy’s.[15][13]

His debut in Gaming Rivalry finds him thoroughly at home, playing cards with Yashy while Mike and Lucy fight over a video game. One crude remark later he is kicked into the sky, and he spends the rest of the chapter lodged in the ceiling, greeting Yashy when she joins him up there.[1][29] The rest of middle school passes in a similar spirit. He and Yashy hop through the three-legged race at Field Day so slowly that the next event starts before they finish.[30] In Unfulfilled Fantasy, a day of losing to Lily sends him charging over to Lucy’s in search of Yashy; he returns to Mike’s with her still taunting him about losing.[5][6]

Before high school starts, he sings Mike awake on his birthday dressed as a lobster.[24] By Yashy’s Birthday, he and Chirpy are in floods of tears because school means no Mike. Yashy’s birthday hints struggle to compete, though both birds join in when the cake comes out.[16]

Through freshman year he mostly turns up around Mike’s house. He gargles beside Mike on the first morning of high school,[31] and he stows away in Mike’s hat to Tess’s Christmas party, where he chases Yashy around the refreshment table once discovered.[19][32] In Love My Way he is Mike’s baffled sounding board about a carnival outing with Daisy.[33]

Paulo settles Sue’s kiss-a-boy dare with a smooch on the nearest available boy, who happens to be Blur, in Search and Rescue.

He is far busier on the summer trip to the islands. He flees the waves in Arrival,[9] and in Search and Rescue Lily sends him and Chirpy to find help when the hike goes wrong.[34] They find Zachary in town and drag him up the mountain by sheer volume, then knock the whole group off a cliff while fleeing a beast.[10][35][11] Once everyone is safe, Paulo uses him to satisfy Sue’s kiss-a-boy dare, planting one on his head to a tearful “Yuck!” and then gnawing on him.[36][37] In Return, the pets greet the news about Paulo and Tess with a chorus of told-you-sos, and Blur wishes he could unsee it.[12]

Back in Roseville for sophomore year, he is kept home from Halloween with the flu,[38] and in Dinner Time he crashes Lucy’s family dinner to complain about Mike’s mushy phone talk. Lucy puts two and two together and leaves the table without finishing her meal.[3][4] Mod Brambles later confirmed that the person on the phone was Mike being sweet to Sandy, and that the blunder fed Lucy’s belief that Mike didn’t care about her.[39] Then, in Leaving Home, Lucy leaves Roseville, and Blur leaves Mike to go with her pets.[20][40] Much later, in Witch Hunt, Lucy tells Sue that the pets chose to stay on at her aunt’s house.[41]

Major relationships

Mike

Mike offers a bandaged stranger a place to belong in Blurry Memories.

Mike wanted a pet, and Blur wanted somewhere to be, so they suited each other from the start. Mike is the one who carries the unconscious bird through the rain and begs Lucy to help him.[27] When Blur wakes up terrified and asking for his branch, Mike sits with him and tells him he never has to feel like he doesn’t have a “place to belong”.[28][15] Veronica’s commentary is honest that there was a bit of pet-envy in it too; Mike had always wanted one of his own.[28][15] The table collapses, Mike announces he’s keeping the bird if Lucy is keeping the hedgehog, and that is that.[15]

Around the house, Blur is a relentlessly cheerful roommate to a boy who is usually brooding over something. He ends Mike’s spiral over a certain kiss by turning up with tea and a “RISE AND SHINE”,[42] greets him with a fond good-morning when Mike wakes from a Sandy dream clutching him,[18] and sleeps at the foot of his bed.[43] Mike kicks him into the sky for the coitus remark, but also asks Lily to keep an eye on him when he has to run.[1][44] Blur is also the one Mike talks to. He quizzes Mike about his supposedly platonic carnival outing with Daisy,[33] and hovers over him on the island insisting he knew he’d make it.[45] After Mike tells Lucy that Sandy means more to him, Blur watches him silently from the floor beside his desk.[46]

When Lucy and her pets leave Roseville in Leaving Home, Blur cannot bear to stay behind. Mike comes home to two blue feathers on his bed and one on the sill of the open window.[20] While telling Sandy that a friend has left, he remembers Blur flapping and crying “Maybe you can deal without them, BUT I CAN’T!!” He had taken it for blowing off steam.[40] Blur settles at Lucy’s aunt’s house with Yashy and Lily.[47] Leaving does not mean he has stopped caring: Veronica describes him as missing Mike, but happy with the people he loves and uninterested in returning to Roseville. She imagines his affection for Yashy complicating his feelings about Mike, while he still hopes Mike will get better.[48]

Yashy

The dark horses arrive at Field Day, already looking more confident than their prospects.

Yashy insults Blur constantly, and she is also the one he can’t do without. She calls him a busted-up loser,[49] and even her defence of him comes with a sting. Telling Lily to leave him alone earns her a quiet smile, until she explains that he is mentally damaged, not ignorant.[2] He, meanwhile, will fly over to Lucy’s after a whole day of losing to Lily shouting “I need Yashy!!”, because he fancies his chances against her.[5] She counts him in her list of family alongside Lucy, Lily and Chirpy.[50]

She also gave him his name, and not gently. On a visit after he moves in with Mike, he offers to teach Chirpy to fly, and Yashy hurls a controller at him. As he dodges he wails that he can’t remember anything because “My mind’s all a blur!!” Yashy decides that will do nicely. He roars that his name is not Blur and answers to it in the very next panel.[13] The two of them are also stuck with a running gag, since Mike told Chirpy that Yashy is her mommy and Blur her daddy. Yashy insists the two of them are nothing like that and beats Mike up over it, while Blur, for once, has nothing to say and just goes red.[49]

Day to day they are card partners, three-legged-race partners and mutual tormentors. They hop along dead last at Field Day cheerfully agreeing they might not come in last after all,[51] and in Hot Pursuit Yashy runs off crying that Blur is being mean to her again while he smirks “Just because I keep winning?” and waves her off until tomorrow.[7] In the end she is the reason he lives where he lives. When Lucy explains why the pets stayed at her aunt’s, it comes down to Yashy deciding, and Blur not wanting to leave her behind.[47] Veronica has described their attachment as mutual romantic feelings, imagining them essentially together without needing to announce it.[48]

Lily

Lily points out that Blur has made a home here, and gets an “Aww!” for it, in Blurry Memories.

Lily saved Blur’s life and later teases him about his memory. She is the one who dragged him out from under the burning tree, describing herself afterwards as a traveller who got “stuck playing firefighter”.[28] Two years on she needles him about ignorance and he snaps that he’s only hazy about things.[2] Once the story is told, though, she is the one who points out that he has made some memories and certainly “made a home here”, which gets an “Aww!” and then a chuckling “You’re weird..”[17]

At cards, she is a formidable opponent. In Unfulfilled Fantasy he puts his losing streak at “like a thousand” games and calls her a stupid hedgehog,[5] and in Hot Pursuit his triumphant Uno call meets her Wild Draw Four and a furious “GO AWAY, HEDGEHOG!!”[21] Away from the table she looks after him. Mike asks her to watch over him,[44] she keeps him home from Halloween because he has the flu,[38] the two of them plan a movie afternoon together,[52] and he clings to her when the news about Paulo and Tess turns his stomach.[12] On the island it is Lily who sends him off to find help,[34] and at Lucy’s aunt’s house it is Lily who is watching over him now.[47]

Minor relationships

Chirpy

Chirpy calls Blur “Daddy” in Flying Lessons, and Yashy has thoughts about that.

Blur is aghast to meet a bird who can’t fly, demanding to know who Chirpy’s mother is, and he volunteers to teach her on the spot.[13] Yashy later gives him grudging credit for managing it where she couldn’t.[49] Chirpy calls him “Boy-Birdie”, and, after Mike’s meddling, “Daddy”.[49][19] The two of them are the household’s air force, flying off together to fetch help in Search and Rescue,[34] and they sob side by side about the start of school in Yashy’s Birthday.[16]

Lucy

Blur arrives to find Lucy suddenly less welcoming than the house usually is.

Lucy patched Blur up when he was found and told him not to even try moving,[28] then sized him up as a bit of a loner and an emo boy to match Mike.[15] Her house became his second home, and he kept visiting after Mike took him in.[13] His worst blunder lands squarely on her, when his complaint about Mike’s phone manner in Dinner Time sends her away from her own dinner table.[4] All the same, when she left Roseville he followed her pets rather than stay behind, and he lives with her aunt to this day.[40][47]

Quotes

Oh, just perform coitus already. Blur, helping Mike and Lucy along in Gaming Rivalry

MY NAME IS NOT BLUR!! Blur, one panel after answering to it, in Blurry Memories

It’d be nice to know.. but I’m kinda happy with what I have now. Blur, to Lily, on his missing memory, in Blurry Memories

Seriously, I lost like a thousand times to this stupid hedgehog! I need Yashy!! Blur, storming out of Mike’s house in Unfulfilled Fantasy

Eeesh, I don’t know how he comes up with all that mushy baby talk! Blur, squeezing through the window into Lucy’s family dinner in Dinner Time

Maybe you can deal without them, BUT I CAN’T!! Blur, to Mike, as remembered in Leaving Home

Trivia

  • Blur went nameless for a long time in the pre-BCB comics, where he was simply “mysterious bird”. Veronica originally borrowed the name from an artist she admired at the time, and has said Yashy’s christening finally gave it a proper origin.[13]
  • Veronica recalls making Blur and Yashy when she was about seven. She isn’t sure whether the name is a Sonic reference, though she admits she was probably Sonic-brained at the time.[53]
  • Fly tag, the game he plays with Chirpy, was a regular pastime among the flying pets in the old comics, including a Togetic character.[13]
  • Veronica’s commentary on Leaving Home says the pets “quickly became obsolete” in the current version of the comic and were written out because they were a stumbling block for new readers.[40] She has since said she doesn’t expect to bring them back, since they were created to be ageless, “permanent children”, and tonally no longer fit, though they remain characters that matter to her.[48]
  • The noncanon Ships Ahoy, Season One pairs him with Yashy, and he answers Mike and Lucy’s K-I-S-S-I-N-G chant with “Denying your feelings is SOOOO 2006!”[54]
  • In the what-if world of Merry Christmas, Roseville!, he appears on a billboard advertising “Blur’s ol-fashioned canned grill!”[55]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Chapter 2: Gaming Rivalry, page 1
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Chapter 19: Blurry Memories, page 1
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 15
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 16
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Chapter 17: Unfulfilled Fantasy, page 3
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Chapter 17: Unfulfilled Fantasy, page 10
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Chapter 20: Hot Pursuit, page 13
  8. ↑ Chapter 17: Unfulfilled Fantasy, page 1
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Chapter 42: Arrival, page 20
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 17
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 18
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Chapter 45: Return, page 10
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 13.6 13.7 Chapter 19: Blurry Memories, page 7
  14. ↑ Chapter 16: Field Day, page 8
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 15.4 15.5 15.6 Chapter 19: Blurry Memories, page 6
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 Yashy’s Birthday, page 1
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Chapter 19: Blurry Memories, page 8
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Chapter 28: Feline Festivities, page 1
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 Chapter 28: Feline Festivities, page 5
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 Chapter 76: Leaving Home, page 8
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Chapter 20: Hot Pursuit, page 1
  22. ↑ Chapter 41: Invitation, page 1
  23. ↑ “Ask response on the origin of Blur’s design”. 2018-02-03.
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 Mike’s Birthday, page 1
  25. ↑ Chapter 57: Mischief Night, page 3
  26. ↑ Chapter 19: Blurry Memories, page 2
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 Chapter 19: Blurry Memories, page 4
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 28.2 28.3 28.4 Chapter 19: Blurry Memories, page 5
  29. ↑ Chapter 2: Gaming Rivalry, page 3
  30. ↑ Chapter 16: Field Day, page 7
  31. ↑ Chapter 21: Enter High School, page 1
  32. ↑ Chapter 28: Feline Festivities, page 7
  33. ↑ 33.0 33.1 Chapter 39: Love My Way, page 2
  34. ↑ 34.0 34.1 34.2 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 12
  35. ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 16
  36. ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 25
  37. ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 26
  38. ↑ 38.0 38.1 Chapter 57: Mischief Night, page 4
  39. ↑ “Ask response clarifying Lucy’s reaction in Dinner Time”. 2021-01-30.
  40. ↑ 40.0 40.1 40.2 40.3 Chapter 76: Leaving Home, page 10
  41. ↑ Chapter 105: Witch Hunt, page 7
  42. ↑ Chapter 15: Aftermath, page 1
  43. ↑ Chapter 51: Unrequited, page 1
  44. ↑ 44.0 44.1 Chapter 20: Hot Pursuit, page 2
  45. ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 22
  46. ↑ Chapter 50: A Distance Apart, page 14
  47. ↑ 47.0 47.1 47.2 47.3 Chapter 105: Witch Hunt, page 8
  48. ↑ 48.0 48.1 48.2 “Ask response on whether the pets will return”. 2026-03-07.
  49. ↑ 49.0 49.1 49.2 49.3 Chapter 6: Flying Lessons, page 4
  50. ↑ Chapter 17: Unfulfilled Fantasy, page 11
  51. ↑ Chapter 16: Field Day, page 4
  52. ↑ Chapter 41: Invitation, page 5
  53. ↑ “Ask response on whether Blur’s name is a Sonic reference”. 2025-11-13.
  54. ↑ Ships Ahoy, Season One, page 9 🔒 (members only)
  55. ↑ Merry Christmas, Roseville!, page 8 🔒 (members only)
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