My Take on the Unicorn vs. Zombie Debate

There has been a Unicorn vs. Zombie fight between Sharon Loves Cats and Books (Team Zombie yay!) and Good Books and Good Wine (Team Unicorn...). I think it's pretty obvious what side I'm on. On Good Books and Good Wine, Mariah from A Reader's Adventure wrote a guest post about why Unicorns are more awesome. I respectfully disagree and I want to explain why. This started out as a comment and them became way too long.

Original post:

1) "[Unicorns] are unpredictable, they may pretend to love you and then go in for the kill, or they may just go through you. Or they might even not try to kill you at all."

My response:

Zombies, although the ravenous man-eating ones will ALWAYS bite you, are unpredictable to some people. If it is a loved one that has turned zombie, they seem to always hope that it's all ok and they can get close to it and perhaps hug it. Wrong. They get bitten or are eaten. Look at the new zombie film Survival of the Dead. Janet O'Flynn gazed at her twin sister who was a zombie and thought she saw a lucidity and intelligence there. She got too close and she was savagely bitten. It happens a lot in zombie movies for some odd reason.

Another way zombies are unpredictable is in their speed. There are the slow shuffley zombies that can barely move and there are the super fast ones from the remake of the Dawn of the Dead. Although I have some reservations about the fast zombies, they still exist. I know if I ever faced a zombie I would pray that it was slow so I could outrun it easily.

Original post:

2) "There is much more diversity in unicorn books. In some they are horrible killers, and in others they are sweet helpful creatures. Zombies are for the most part evil."

My response:

There is an incredible range of diversity in the zombie genre. There are the ravenous eating machine zombies of World War Z by Max Brooks, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, Dance of the Dead, Dead Snow, Soulless by Christopher Golden, etc. Then there are a whole slew of other types of zombies. In Stacey Jay's You Are So Undead to Me, normal zombies are just dead people who want something in their lives resolved before they lay to rest. They do not eat people and are able to speak. In Fido, zombies have been domesticated to be servants and take up very easy jobs. In Breathers by S.G. Browne, zombies are really no different from humans except that they decompose. In Grace, the only indication that the baby isn't normal is it's appetite for human flesh. Other than that, it's looks like a very healthy, normal human baby. In the game Plants Vs. Zombies, there are an incredible number of different types of zombies: fast dance zombies, miner zombies, floating balloon zombies, fast football zombies, very scary gargantuan zombies, and so on. Plus they are different in that they eat plants, but I'm sure they do that just to get to your house and eat your brains.

The I have only seen three different types of unicorns: the very stupid, beautiful ones that are attracted to virgins featured in Mercedes Lackey's series Tales of the 500 Kingdoms, the killer zombies of Rampant by Diana Peterfreund, and the robot unicorns of Robot Unicorn Attack from Adult Swim.

Original post:

3) "Rampant by Diana Peterfreund is a unicorn book and it rocks!"

My response:

I haven't read this book, but it seems pretty cool. I would have thought it would have been ammo for Team Zombie. Unicorns are portrayed in movies such as Legend and The Last Unicorn as cute, cuddly creatures that need to be saved. This book is about killer unicorns. I don't know if I'd rather be killed by a zombie or a unicorn, but zombies seem more obvious. I don't really understand if the killer unicorns in the book are just evil or are just savage wild animals. I guess I'll just have to read it to find out.

Original post:

4) "Unicorns are better looking by a long shot. I mean ripped clothing and pieces of flesh was so last year. Zombie lovers would you even ever like to see a zombie? I mean gross."

My response:

I guess you have a point there. Zombies do look pretty gross.

Original Post:

5) "Unicorns can symbolize so many different things like eternal life ect. but zombies only represent death and destruction."

My response:

This is the one I disagree with the most. Zombies can represent so much more than death and destruction (although they are pretty good at that). In Carrie Ryan's The Forest of Hands and Teeth, zombies represent the constraints of the oppressive society the characters live in. In George A. Romero's films, they represent consumerism and people's sheep mentality. He is also critical as to the policies and politics of the US. In E. Van Lowe's Never Slow Dance with a Zombie, zombies represent the overwhelming power of peer pressure and the movement against teens being true to themselves that teens have to fight against. In Grace, the zombie baby represents the lengths that mothers will go to in order to protect and nurture their children. I could go on and on, but zombies represent so much more than death and destruction.

Original post:

6) "Zombies are so overdone. There are so many zombie books that it is hard to find a new idea."

My response:

It may be true that there are a great many zombie books at the moment, but authors are not to be underestimated. I have read so many different types of zombie books that there are rarely two that are alike. There are the Regency era, Jane Austen mashups, zombie comedies, zombie romances, regular horror zombies, zombie self help books, etc. I think my other responses also indicate that there are a lot of different types of zombies that represent different things.

Original post:

7) "Unicorns are just plain better."

My response:

No. Just no.