It’s a rivalry spanning decades and thousands of miles: that of Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner he’s eternally chasing. But, curiously, whenever Coyote stares hungrily at the Roadrunner as his latest harebrained scheme causes him to go flying by, that hunger looks a lot like intense, carnal yearning. And even stranger, Roadrunner always smiles so happily whenever he sees Coyote fly by, seconds from gaining yet another crushing injury. It could be the smug, mocking grin of the victor… or something else.The question has been sitting in the back of many a Looney Tunes fan’s mind for years (OK, maybe just a select few): Is the dynamic between Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner really just that of predator and prey? What about the fact that Coyote is doomed to never catch the thing he hungers for, or that Roadrunner seems to enjoy their eternal chase? After all, what is Sisyphus without his boulder? However, it wasn’t until Coyote vs. Acme hit theaters in 2026 that fandom gained a word that accurately described that peculiar mix of rivalry, hostility, and codependency: toxic yaoi.But how did a term that originated in Japanese erotic fiction become internet slang? And what does Joe Biden have to do with it?From “Boys’ Love” to BidenYaoi emerged from the Boys Love genre in Japan. | YUICHI YAMAZAKI/AFP/Getty ImagesLet’s first go back to the origins of yaoi. A term that emerged in the late ’70s and ’80s to describe a subgenre of the Japanese literary genre now known as “Boys’ Love” (an umbrella term for any homoerotic fiction), yaoi is a portmanteau of yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi, which means “no climax, no point, no meaning.” If that translation sounds a little facetious, that’s because it is: It was a self-deprecating term that referred to amateur, fan-produced works that overly focused on sex, at the cost of plot or character development.Most yaoi were unofficial fan works that centered on male characters from mainstream manga or anime and put them in sexual scenarios. “Boys’ Love” would eventually become a more commercially accepted genre — there’s a whole industry in Japan of official published works that focus on homoerotic fiction marketed toward gay men or women — but yaoi remained firmly in the fan space. This is how the term eventually migrated into Western internet spaces, where it started to evolve into something of a meme.The tweet that started it all. | X (Twitter)In August 2023, X (formerly known as Twitter) user @fangfilet posted the words “toxic yaoi” in response to a post of Joe Biden saying that he felt compelled to run for president again because Donald Trump was running. It was a joke post, pointing out the weirdly symbiotic relationship Biden and Trump had developed against their will. But it would effectively launch the term into the stratosphere, making “toxic yaoi” more than just a semi-straightforward term that existed only in fan spaces. Soon other users would be posting about how Jesus Christ and Judas were “the original toxic yaoi I know the fujoshis of jerusalem were gagged.” (Fujoshis is a term for women who enjoy homoerotic fiction or fan works.) “Toxic yaoi” was now evolving beyond the fan spaces where it referred to exclusively romantic pairings; now it was a concept that was used ironically — toxic yaoi could now just refer to that twisted, complex, but codependent relationship between two heterosexual men — lending it far more mainstream staying power.What Pairings Are Toxic Yaoi?The only way to describe the relationship between Louis and Lestat is “toxic.” | AMCThere are a handful of toxic yaoi pairings that are straightforward “ships,” meaning they’re either canonically romantic or are shipped together by fans. Ships like Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham from NBC’s Hannibal or Louis de Pointe du Lac and Lestat de Lioncourt from AMC’s Interview With the Vampire are prime examples of this: torrid, romantic relationships between two men who make each other — or the lives of people around them — worse.But more interesting is when the term is used to describe a certain dynamic that’s not explicitly romantic — the Biden/Trump types, if you get my drift. The epitome of this is the duo from Michael Mann’s 1995 masterpiece Heat: Robert De Niro’s master criminal Neil McCauley and Al Pacino’s dogged lieutenant Vincent Hanna. The two of them meet only twice through the course of the film, which follows Hanna’s team as he attempts to capture the criminal crew that heists banks all over L.A., but even in those brief interactions — and in their scenes apart — it’s clear that they’re more similar than not. It’s the kind of kindred-spirit dynamic that lends McCauley and Hanna that yaoi element, while the fact that they’ll always be on opposing sides of the law introduces the “toxic” part.Peak toxic yaoi. | Monarchy/Regency/Kobal/Shutterstock“Toxic yaoi” then becomes a linguistic shorthand for these kinds of fascinating male character dynamics. It uses modern fan-speak to better describe classic dynamics — how else would you describe whatever is going on between Peter Falk and John Cassavetes’ small-time mobsters in Elaine May’s 1976 classic Mikey and Nicky?And that’s how it all loops back around to Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner, who fall somewhere in between the romantic and non-romantic readings of toxic yaoi (though the hilarious amount of fan edits that have dropped on TikTok and X suggest it’s more the former). It’s a Sisyphean rivalry built into their DNA, but isn’t it also a little romantic, and maybe a little toxic, that the boulder loves Sisyphus back?