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I know you're not accepting criticisms but here's a few anyway. If you don't want her to be cute, stop drawing her as a young girl with massive honkers. Give her some age. Add more sharp edges to her design instead of all these round shapes. Stop giving her big eyes with big pupils. These are just basic ideas that keep the character somewhere in the realm of "mundane" that you're going for. Throwing blood and huge sword on her are not enough to portray "badass" even the op image for example doesn't portray hardened badass character, it portrays a young, weak girl, desperately trying to defend herself and failing.
