the-midnight-doe submittted:

Wanted to take a break from all the sexist designs I keep seeing by showing an actual good one. This is the villain of Shovel Knight, and wow is it refreshing to see a female villain that isn’t all cleavage and panties. She’s still beautiful, her outfit is still awesome, and you can still get the idea that she’s a seductress without her showing any skin at all. We really need to stop this trend that all female villains are seductresses (and boy doesn’t that say a lot that a woman being “confident in her sexuality”, as anti-feminists like to argue, means that she’s actually evil) and start making women that are actually interesting and have well thought out designs instead of the silly and lazy metal bikinis. 

While this does very arguably play into the Evil is Sexy trope I feel it’s worth pointing out that if you have a world full of people in their armor a little shapeliness goes a long way.  You don’t need windows and holework to show off every allowable inch of skin – the message can be conveyed quite clearly with full covering dress.

– wincenworks

If only more character designers took queues from creative and successful predecessors (like Maleficent, in this case) instead of blindly following the “sex sells” myth… We would, at the very least, see more than just characters and costumes made according to a “creative” checklist.

Still, this particular one could be a bit less obvious about its inspiration.

~Ozzie