You know those girls that didn’t talk to you in high school because they were gorgeous and popular and were too busy being fabulous to notice the geeks and nerds? Team Unicorn is made up of those girls, only they are gorgeous and popular PLUS they love all the geeky nerdy stuff you do. And they might actually hang out with you because they are awesome and friendly and this isn’t high school anymore and being vapid and shallow doesn’t get you quite as far in the real world as it did back then. Which kind of sucks really as I was all Emo and deep and tormented in high school and I feel like being vapid and shallow now and it just isn’t working out for me. But I digress. I was talking about the fangirl goodness that is Team Unicorn, the brainchild of Rileah Vanderbilt, Clare Grant, Michele Boyd, and Milynn Sarley.
Speaking of Clare Grant, I’d just like to point out that she stole my life. Not my real life, of course, as I doubt anyone would want to steal that even if I have cute hair and subscription to Netflix. But my fantasy life. Clare Grant is attractive and successful. She plays “Halo” with Nathan Fillion and is married to Seth Green. She not only goes to Comic Con, but she goes in full cosplay as Sailor Moon. She wins at Scrabble (according to Twitter) and she has met Stan Lee. Basically, Clare Grant is exactly who I wanted to be when I grew up. Only I ended up being me, and Clare Grant got to be, well, Clare Grant. And now, on top of the stuff she’s already done, Clare Grant has joined up with three of her attractive, successful friends to form Team Unicorn (Geek Girls: Like Unicorns, We’re Not Supposed to Exist.), a multi-media etcetera type of group that is expanding the definition of what it means to be a “geek and gamer girl.”
If you haven’t heard of Team Unicorn yet you probably will soon. They have been infiltrating short films, television, and movies for years. The group is made up of the above-mentioned Clare Grant as well as Michele Boyd, Rileah Vanderbilt, and Milynn Sarley. Clare appeared in Walk the Line, Masters of Horror, The Graves, and Black Snake Moan. Her voice has also made an appearance in Robot Chicken. Michele played Zaboo’s beautiful but somewhat scary girlfriend Riley in the webseries The Guild. (Her character was actually based on Rileah, a friend of Felicia Day as well as – it seems – most of the other geek/gamer community in California.) Michele has also had spots on Sons of Anarchy, The Young and the Restless, Cheerleader Massacre 2, How I Met Your Mother, and Solo: The Series. Rileah may not have as many acting credits as Clare or Michele, though she did appear in Hatchet and Hatchet II, but she has played behind the scenes quite often as a writer, producer, and make-up artist. Milynn hosts EATV and has guest hosted Attack of the Show on G4 as well as The Daily Fix on IGN. She also starred in Street Fighter High: The Musical and took a role in Weeding Out.
So the girls of Team Unicorn are obviously busy and productive in their individual lives. Where do they find time to join together and come up with even more stuff? Because they don’t just hang out playing games and talking about geek and gamer guys. They are actually producing original videos as well. In fact they just released their fourth viral video since forming up. Their first was a music video parody called “Geek and Gamer Girls” (a play on Katy Perry’s “California Gurls”) and included a rapping Seth Green, cameos by Katee Sackhoff and Stan Lee, and Michele Boyd dressed as Han Solo. After that came the PSA spoof, “A Very Zombie Holiday,” that gave helpful tips on how to prioritize backing pies and killing the undead. “superHarmony” is THE dating service for heroes and villains, as evidenced by the video showcasing Lex Luthor, Wonder Woman, the Batman, and Poison Ivy with their new significant others (this one is worth watching for Batman and Lex alone, as they are hilarious). And their newest film, as of this article at any rate (as I’m sure they will be coming out with more stuff in the near future because that is just the type of super sentai team they are) is a trailer for a throwback musical beach party movie called “Alien Beach Crashers.” Its got bikinis, dancing, rear projected surfing, and copious amounts of blood and guts.
The petty, jealous, tween girl deep inside of me wants to hate the girls of Team Unicorn. They are pushing past the geek girl stereotypes (they’ve actually been accused of being TOO SEXY) and creating media projects that I want to have created. But they look like they are having so much fun doing it all, and when they talk about their interests in the worlds of video games, anime, role-playing games, fantasy novels, and comic books, I can relate to them. In fact, I like them and want to hang out with them; I think we’d have a good time. I love Sailor Moon, I adore Star Wars, I’ve played Halo and World of Warcraft (neither very well). These are my peeps – albeit the tall, gorgeous, famous ones who don’t actually know that I exist. Still….think if I invited them to my slumber party they’d come?
Check out Team Unicorn in all their geek and gamer girl glory at their website and their Facebook page.
And if you are lucky enough to be attending Comic-Con 2011 you can meet them in person, probably cosplaying something, and apparently hanging out with the California Browncoats (according to recent news from “Realm” on Machinima.com).
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Melissa loves geeky things. Fanfiction, Dr. Who, cosplay, comic book tattoos, skinny guys with a penchant for historical LARPing - these are all a few of her favorite things. She spends her days pretending to work diligently at her writing, when really she plays epic games of Flash Battleship and fake knife fights around the livingroom. When she finally tires of that, she manages to bang out reviews and articles about all of the awesome fangeeky things she's thought about that day. She kinda wishes she could make tons of money at it, but knows she would just spend it all on super hero capes for her cat and a herd of Aldabra tortoises for her yard. 
