mythology | Musings of the Monster Librarian

Women in Horror Month: Book Review: Dying With Her Cheer Pants On: Stories of the Fighting Pumpkins by Seanan McGuire

( Amazon.com | Subterranean Press limited edition hardcover | Subterranean Press ebook edition )

Dying With Her Cheer Pants On: Stories of the Fighting Pumpkins by Seanan McGuire

Subterranean Press, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-1596069978

Available: Direct from Subterranean Press (limited edition hardcover, ebook edition), and Kindle edition

Into every high school class a cheerleading squad must come to fight against the forces of darkness: aliens, mud monsters, and eldritch creatures. Squads that don’t survive until graduation are forgotten, and a mysterious force chooses a new cheer captain to recruit a new squad. This tight-knit group of cheerleaders, who may or may not be supernatural themselves, are the Fighting Pumpkins of Johnson’s Crossing, California. These are their stories.

The stories have been published over time, in different places: I first encountered them in the story “Away Game”, a clever, if predictable, story that appears in A Secret Guide to Fighting Elder Gods, edited by Jennifer Brozek, and have been seeking out their stories since then. I’m so glad they have now been collected together. Originally a limited edition published by Subterranean Press, the collection is now available as an ebook.

Because there have been many cheerleading squads over a long period of time, the stories can be set in a variety of time periods, with different characters. While the majority of the Fighting Pumpkins stories are linked stories about the same varsity squad, with half-vampire cheer captain Jude, squad historian Colleen, Laurie, who has a command voice, supernaturally strong Marti, and undead Heather, a few take place in other time periods and with other squads, such as the titular “Dying With Her Cheer Pants On”, in which the team dies calling Bloody Mary from a mirror during an alien invasion to exterminate the aliens, and “Switchblade Smile”, which features Jude’s mother Andrea, a vampire, as a cheerleader in the 1930s.

Character development is strong, and there is a lot of humor (how can there not be with a team called the Fighting Pumpkins?). McGuire draws from a kitchen-sink universe where any creature of the imagination can be real, and remixes tropes to create her stories, but the sisterhood of the girls on the cheer squad is what makes the stories of the Fighting Pumpkins really enjoyable. Although a story might center on a specific character, these stories aren’t about a single individual or chosen one bound to save the world on her own. The girls are a team, and they stick together even when things are scary, or dangerous, or one of them turns out to be a monster. Two related stories that involve cheerleader Heather Monroe stood out as favorites, “Gimme a Z”, in which she rises from the grave and defends her sister Pumpkins from an undead mob, and “Turn the World Around”, an often poetic story in which she helps a girl who mysteriously shows up in a Fighting Pumpkins uniform make a life-and-death decision that will affect the entire community. “School Colors” covers a cheerleading competition between the Fighting Pumpkins and an alien cheerleading squad that could decide the fate of the planet.

The stories of the Fighting Pumpkins are a little scary, but mostly a lot of fun. Those looking for a break from heavy or intense reading will find a lot to like, as will Buffy lovers. YA readers may enjoy this collection as well.

Contains : strong language, violence, some gore. The story “Fiber” received some criticism from First Nations people regarding McGuire’s interpretation of the wendigo.

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Help a Reader Out: Are Myths Fiction or Nonfiction?

Interestingly, this question popped up in keyword searches a number of times, so I’m going to briefly address it.

“Are myths fiction or nonfiction?”

The answer probably depends on who you ask and why. I imagine that if you ask an atheist, you’ll get the answer “fiction”. But in the wonderful world of the Dewey Decimal System, books (and other media) on mythology are in the 200s, the category for philosophy and religion. So for straight mythology or books about mythology, it’s considered nonfiction. Poetry (like Homer’s Odyssey will generally end up in the 800s, with other books of poetry. Yes, poetry is considered nonfiction.

Novels and stories inspired by mythology usually end up getting pulled from the 800s and end up shelved with fiction, though. So if you’re asking because you want to know where Rick Riordan’s books fall on the shelf, you’ll find those in fiction. And if you are asking about a graphic novel, it kind of depends on the library. Some libraries will shelve all graphic novels under 741.5, the number for that format, and some pull the graphic novels into a separate section and shelve them by either subject (my daughter’s elementary) or author (my son’s middle school).

So the answer is that, especially in the library, it’s complicated. And sometimes it is kind of hard to figure out. If you’ve encountered Percy Jackson’s Greek Gods”, it probably falls in nonfiction, even though it is written in the annoying contemporary voice of a fictional character(that’s just my personal opinion, my kids love it) and “updated” versions of many myths. But the novels will end up shelved in fiction. Ultimately, though, the myths of a culture are stories of their gods, and their religion, and as long as people believe in gods, mythology is nonfiction.

It occurs to me that, given that this site focuses on horror fiction, someone reading this might think “Well, what about the Cthulu mythos? That’s a mythology, right? Why isn’t Lovecraft in the 200s?” As it was originally the invention of one person recognized as a writer of fiction, and how that person felt about religion is publicly known, I don’t see why it would be anywhere except in fiction. If you do know a person who worships the Elder Gods, please encourage them to seek help.