io9 Readers Share Their Thirst

Earlier this week Ubisoft dazzled gamers with a surprise fully fledged look at Outlaws, its upcoming open-world action adventure Star Wars game. In what we’ve seen so far, Outlaws wants to play with Star Wars in ways other recent games maybe haven’t so much—an intriguing mid-Trilogy setting, a smuggler protagonist instead of a Rebel or a Jedi. But for all the surprises, perhaps one has stood out most.

People are mad thirsty for Outlaws’ robot ally.

ND-5—a familiar Star Wars design in a Commando Droid from Star Wars: The Clone Wars, zuzhed up with a loose duster and a blaster slung around his waist—is not the main character of Star Wars Outlaws. That’s Kay Vess, a young female human played by actress Humberly González, a rookie smuggler working her way through the Star Wars underworld. But ND-5, an enforcer droid Kay becomes acquainted with as both a guide to the seedy world of Star Wars crime and as a traveling companion, has seemingly captured the hearts and minds, and other parts, of legions of fans. But how? Like I said, ND-5’s basic design is something that has been in Star Wars before, so it’s not like there’s something wholly unique about his aesthetic to charm people. A good duster is a good duster, regardless of who’s wearing it. But as curious as I was, after asking on social media what made people so immediately horny for ND, fans surprised me with both their thirst and insightfulness on the topic altogether (and even with some surprise Outlaws fanfic, to boot).

Several people who spoke to me admired the simple aesthetic additions to ND-5’s otherwise standard model. “The segments of the torso look like ripped abs, the blaster belt is hanging off one hip at a dangerously attractive angle,” one reader, Mythbri, told me over email. “The jacket is both rolled up at the sleeves and duster-length,” she continued, “which is the sluttiest of all jacket lengths.”

“It’s all in that little, lithe, Genosian body,” another, Alex, added. “I know at heart ND-5 is just another tsundere [ed. note: the Japanese term for a character arc that sees someone grow from cold and distant, to warm and approachable, to a character they develop an attachment to], he acts so tough in that little jacket but it’s just to make him seem bigger, tougher than his circuits really are.”

For others, the model of droid itself—a BX Commando Droid—while already existent in Star Wars, is uncommon enough and divergent enough from the more typical Battle Droids of the prequel era, to invite more pointed comparisons to the humanoid form. “ND-5 wears a big duster jacket, covering his slender droid frame. As others have pointed out, he has a generally thin and twinky body type, but still has wide enough shoulders that he doesn’t come off as a pushover,” Cyrus added. “This ambiguity lets you read him as submissive or dominant, so he can fit whichever fantasy a reader has. His humanlike head also makes for a more kissable and relatable face than other droid models.”

But while some pointed towards the humanized design of ND-5 to support their allure, for other Star Wars fans it is ND’s distinctly non-human selfhood that appeals, part of a rise in a more accepted online and mainstream awareness of attraction to something that is othered, away from traditional human form. “I think the reaction to the ND-5 is just an organic extension of the ‘monster fucker’ trend we’ve seen normalized in online spaces,” games writer and Star Wars fan James Wood told me over email. “Folks wanting to bang non-human sci-fantasy creatures isn’t a particularly new trend, but it absolutely feels like the past few years have gone a long way to turning formerly sicko culture into a more mainstream.”

“So, when a tall, dark, and handsome stranger in a cool coat strides onto the scene of the latest Star War, it doesn’t really matter all that much if he’s made of metal,” Wood continued. “Hot is hot now, we’ve equal opportunitied fuckability.” There is something transgressive and queer about this particular subsection of fandom too—comments I received about ND-5 came from an array of women, men, and nonbinary people, and people of varying sexual identities united in their attraction, sexually or otherwise—to whom beings like ND-5 can be seen as akin to those similarly divergent groups they identify with.

“Outlaws already had a mascot for the normies in its axolotl-dog,” Wood concluded. “The fuckable droid is for the rest of us.”

But for many, the allure of ND-5 is less about a primal attraction to his aesthetic, and more about what that aesthetic represents. ND is a droid, but he is treated—by both the lens Outlaws invites the audience to see him through, and through Kay herself—as a person in his own sentient right. “I’m regularly driven up the wall by the ways in which every droid in Star Wars is both a cute mascot character and also a slave often owned by the heroes,” Em told me. “[ND-5] is a guy who seemingly knows the world he lives in and gives off the vibe of being weary of it and pissed off (hopefully to better effect than Solo did).”

This is something Star Wars has historically struggled with. From all the way back to where it started with C-3PO and R2-D2 in A New Hope, right up to Din Djarin’s relationship with droids in The Mandalorian, Star Wars media has messily failed navigate treating droid beings as either sentient beings with rights and that we can empathize with, or unthinking, unpersoned tools of servitude or combat. ND-5 stands out to people immediately because unlike other “mascot” droid characters, he’s not treated by Kay as a pet, in the way we’ve seen with Obi-Wan Kenobi’s L0-LA59, the sequel trilogy’s BB-8, or even Jedi Survivor’s BD-1. Neither is he treated as a servant or tool, like Threepio and Artoo could be. He is, even in the little we’ve seen of Outlaws so far, unequivocally a person in his own right.

“Away from the subject of sexy droids is the treatment of droids’ societal status broadly in Star Wars, and how it’s rarely addressed textually,” Cyrus continued in their email. “As seen in the Outlaws trailer, droids are subject to discrimination, with droids being refused entry or service to amenities. They are chattel slaves, free to be modified, killed, or lobotomized at their master’s whim. I’ve always felt it’s kinda fucked up that there is a grand total of one character, L3-37 in Solo, who advocates for droid rights.”

The fact that ND-5 exhibits this selfhood particularly through aesthetic choices is pointed, too, amplifying people’s interest in him. “By choosing to dress alone he’s made a statement about his individuality and by not needing clothing, his clothing choices become that much more meaningful,” another reader, Luci, told me over email. “He’s specifically choosing to wear the coat of a badass, hard, but sensitive person, and by only wearing a coat, he’s sending a much more pure message, not to be diluted by other things. And there’s also the fact that JUST a coat is like… so much more meaningful because it’s one of the most optional pieces of clothing? Like, even humans almost always choose to wear a coat.”

“Unlike every droid I can think of he is wearing a coat, a suggestion of self-expression that stands out,” Em continued. “A coat means he’s out doing business. A coat is a statement. When he’s home sinking into an oil bath, he has to take the coat off. Same as anyone else.”

Maybe as Star Wars tries to navigate its messy approach to droid personhood, the more we will see creative teams treat droids as people in their own rights, instead of tools and servants, and the more we’ll see breakout character designs like ND’s, instantly latching on with a willing audience of thirsty admirers. Admirers ready and willing to make fanfic out of a handful of shots in a video game trailer, like this small aforementioned sequence provided to me by game devloper Adira Slattery:

ND-5 walks towards me sitting at the edge of the bed, his coat parting absentmindedly as we get close. My pulse quickens as he towers over me, his slender waist neatly fitting between my legs. I can’t look anywhere but at his broad mechanical chest. A scar runs across it, and I trace the outline of burned metal.

“Sorry,” I say sheepishly. With a quick movement I feel his precise fingers guide my head to look at him. His cold eyes look only at me, flickering softly.

“Can I trust you?” I say as the gears in his fingers tighten ever slightly around my chin.

ND-5 pauses for a moment. “No,” he rumbles.

Welcome to the thirst club, ND-5: people are very glad you’re here.

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