" my name's blurry face and I care what you think. " Dan Howell has an unknown condition where he cannot see faces - no matter what he wears or does - they are always a blur. The doctors nicknamed it 'blurry face', and there's absolutely nothing they can do about it; Dan will have to live without faces. That is, until he meets Phil Lester - the 'bad boy' of Dan's new school - who's face is strangely visible to Dan; much to Dan's wonder and Phil's distaste.

When Dan finds out he's getting adopted mere months before aging out of the system, he doesn't feel any sense of joy. The Lester family is a few years too late, considering he hasn't longed for the commitment and the love of a home for a long time now. He's been focused on other things, things he was told to grow out of but is only becoming more interested in as time goes on. See, without much of a notable future to look forward to, people tend to fixate on the past. Dan has nothing if not a colorful past to look back on. He doesn't want new parents, he wants answers about who (what) took his old ones away from him.