If you don't remember her or haven't read the series yet, Poundcake is a supervillain with the body and mind of a little girl and the strength of a thousand grown women. Her brief backstory was told as her being a full-grown woman who went insane after being implanted with an ATLAS implant that shrank her body. She acts like the girl she appears to be, even though she still has grown-up desires. Some people have asked why I created her. It doesn't really have anything to do with children or satire or romance. It was a complete accident.
When I was developing the first book, I knew I wanted to have a group of five supervillains for Paragon to fight, and I chose them based on the need to challenge him. Professor Puma was the scientific genius, Speed Freak was the speedster, Alley Cat was the gymnast, and Earthmover was the leader. I needed a physically strong character and I was struggling with the name.
One of the biggest problems with creating superheroes and supervillains is that all the good names are taken. I was literally creating lists of names that sounded strong. I would pick a word like "fist" and come up with variations off it to come up with a name that worked. Some rejects were Mister Fist, Thunderhead, and Muscle Man. Yeah, he was supposed to be a man.
As I was playing around with names that had the word "Pound" in it, I wrote down Poundcake. It was just a joke at first but it struck me that the name sounded like Strawberry Shortcake, a popular doll when I was growing up. That made me think of a child like Strawberry Shortcake but with super-strength. The idea of a little girl throwing around cars and the contrast of a child who's stronger than full-grown men seemed fun to me.
The problem, though, was that I didn't want Paragon to be fighting an actual child. That seemed wrong so I decided she would have the body of a child and the mind of an adult. That also gave me a solution for how Paragon could beat her when she was so much stronger than him: he would psychologically break her instead of physically.
At the end of their fight scene, I had Poundcake flirt with Paragon, just because (in my world) every woman flirts with Paragon. I wrote the scene and thought no more about her, except to wonder if people would think I was a freak for making Paragon fight a little girl. Imagine my surprise when I started getting emails, reviews, and messages about people who wanted her to come back. Apparently, she was a lot more popular than I expected. She will be returning in Super Babes 4, along with some other surprises.
When I was developing the first book, I knew I wanted to have a group of five supervillains for Paragon to fight, and I chose them based on the need to challenge him. Professor Puma was the scientific genius, Speed Freak was the speedster, Alley Cat was the gymnast, and Earthmover was the leader. I needed a physically strong character and I was struggling with the name.
One of the biggest problems with creating superheroes and supervillains is that all the good names are taken. I was literally creating lists of names that sounded strong. I would pick a word like "fist" and come up with variations off it to come up with a name that worked. Some rejects were Mister Fist, Thunderhead, and Muscle Man. Yeah, he was supposed to be a man.
As I was playing around with names that had the word "Pound" in it, I wrote down Poundcake. It was just a joke at first but it struck me that the name sounded like Strawberry Shortcake, a popular doll when I was growing up. That made me think of a child like Strawberry Shortcake but with super-strength. The idea of a little girl throwing around cars and the contrast of a child who's stronger than full-grown men seemed fun to me.
The problem, though, was that I didn't want Paragon to be fighting an actual child. That seemed wrong so I decided she would have the body of a child and the mind of an adult. That also gave me a solution for how Paragon could beat her when she was so much stronger than him: he would psychologically break her instead of physically.
At the end of their fight scene, I had Poundcake flirt with Paragon, just because (in my world) every woman flirts with Paragon. I wrote the scene and thought no more about her, except to wonder if people would think I was a freak for making Paragon fight a little girl. Imagine my surprise when I started getting emails, reviews, and messages about people who wanted her to come back. Apparently, she was a lot more popular than I expected. She will be returning in Super Babes 4, along with some other surprises.
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