Y/N E/N Imagines

About

Y/N Imagines, also known as E/N Imagines, refers to a series of fanfiction stories created by users on the website Wattpad, as well as on Archive Of Our Own. These stories, created often from the POV of someone living through an imaginary situation, started to gain traction on TikTok in early 2021, leading to a revival of the genre in the following years. The slang terms "Y/N" and E/N" mean "Your/Name" and "Enemy/Name."

Origin

A longtime staple in short-form fanfiction writing, Y/N, meaning Your/Name, as well as E/N, Enemy/Name, and other similar phrases, have been used online in niche writing circles for decades. These types of short story posts in which the reader is supposed to be able to self-insert themselves into the story, started to become popularized on various websites until they eventually landed on TikTok in early 2021.

On April 12th, 2021, TikToker Stories.mighthappen^[1] uploaded one of these "imagine" stories to the platform, with the accompanying context that Y/N stood for Your Name to help those new to the genre (shown below). The video received over 300 likes in three years.

Spread

The genre of content began to grow in 2022, with newer TikTok accounts being made to only post more imagine stories to the platform. For example, on January 22nd, 2022, TikToker @_justimagines_^[2] started to post a seven-part story, complete with Y/N, E/N, and H/N (His/Name), as self-insertable gaps for the reader (shown below, parts 1-2).

Later on in 2022, the platform became inundated with these posts to the point where people began to make memes about them. On May 8th, 2022, TikToker vxcsew^[3] became known on the platform after going viral for their own version of an imagine story in which they created a fanfiction that was overwhelmingly large and impossible to read as a parody of how the short stories are often just large blocks of text, earning over 336,000 likes in two years (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References