Mighty Moshin' Emo Rangers Story Pack

The Mighty Moshin' Emo Rangers Story Pack is a pack introducing clothing and Sims to The Sims 4 by Dozerfleet Labs. The pack focuses on adapting the cast of the British MTV2 series, and was seen as a way to repurpose mods and custom content created specifically for the Emo Rangers' appearances in Volkonir Meets the Power Rangers. It also commemorates the fact that Dozerfleet Literature embarked on an undertaking in 2017 to revamp the official Emo Rangers Wiki on Fandom.

Main description
Alright, Simmers; it's moshin' time!

Has your Sims 4 game been overrun with boredom and depression, and in need of some flare and fashion to arise out of that, for far too long? Now you can fix that, with these uploads - approved of by series co-creator Chris Phillips himself on May 18th of 2017!

The series by Chris Phillips and Nick Pittom can be relived in your game for years to come (or until Sims 5 and Paralives come out, but...nit-picks, right?) Give these Rangers the adventures they never had the budget to explore before! One of the funniest shows to ever come out of the UK, finally gets the Sims treatment it deserves (maybe)!

If you're not familiar with this gem of a short-lived series, then the wiki for it is here. And just in case you didn't know, it's these versions of the Emo Rangers that featured in Volkonir Meets the Power Rangers on Mod the Sims!

Ross Fretten / Introspective White Emo Ranger
This brooding overachiever tends to overthink everything. Which may be why he is so successful at many endeavors - yet never happy. He usually "leads" the Emo Rangers into battle - when he remembers to. If he forgets, he always has Captain Emohead to bark orders and insult everyone into conformity.

Vicki "Vicken" Symes-Godby / Weeping Tears Yellow Emo Ranger
Vicken has always had a soft spot for youth in trouble, and those with severe depression. She's been there, done that, herself! Being an Emo Ranger, however, gives her a chance to finally cheer up a little - and make the enemies of humanity cry instead!

Luke Markey / Chaos Mohawk Red Emo Ranger
Luke has seen capitalism be replaced with its evil twin: socialistic crony corporatism. He hates it, passionately! He'd sooner have anarchy! The government has done nothing to endear itself to him either. And for some reason, he even finds his own mother despicable. But what does he riot against even worse? The Evil Empress and her tyranny, and her diabolical Hoodie Patrol!

Fai Archer-Burnett / Fashion X Core Purple Emo Ranger
Introduced late in the first season, Fai gets her own separate robot. She also adds a fashionable twist to fighting the Evil Empress - and all her would-be replacement baddies!

John Penn / Chronic Stoner Green Emo Ranger / Straight X Edge Blue Emo Ranger
John has always valued the idea of peace, and pursuit of fulfillment. But he looked for it in all the wrong places. And he also learned the hard way that sometimes, when you want peace, prepare for war.

When he gives up weed, the Evil Empress creates a knockoff of his old Chronic Stoner morpher, and gives it to an evil clone. He must literally go to war against his own past, in order to earn the right to be truly StraightXEdge!

Stef Braithwaite / Bleeding Heart Pink Emo Ranger
A cranky, loony leftist with a distaste for honesty, who hates Paul Joseph Watson for fake reasons. She was dumped in front of the entire school, and now wants to see others' hearts break like her own.

Even so, she'll suit up to save Chelmsford when aliens and monsters go murdering it. (But don't expect her to lift a finger against ISIS leftovers, Saddiq Khaaaaaan, and UN Agenda 21!)

Package contents

 * Emo Rangers.zip (375 KB)
 * Tray files for household
 * Ross
 * Luke
 * John
 * Vicken
 * Fai
 * Stef
 * Emo Ranger Suits.zip (543 KB)
 * Chaos Mohawk.zip (462 KB)
 * Emo Rangers Diffusion Maps.zip (951 KB)

Expansions required
Oddly enough, no stuff or game packs are required to run this pack. Only three expansion packs are required to run anything in it: Get to Work, Get Together, and City Living.

Software required

 * Sims 4 Studio (to install the PNGs into Grilled-Cheese-Aspiration's helmet as swatches)

Additional party custom content requirements

 * Body Hair, Version 5 by Luumia at LuumiaSims (Tumblr)
 * Defined Feet Overlay (W1) by Sims 4 Nexus
 * Defined Hand Overlay (1) by Sims 4 Nexus
 * Ricky Male Skin Overlay by WistfulCastle at The Sims Resource
 * Height Slider and Shorter Teens Mod by SimmyTheSim at Mod the Sims (Note: Deprecated. Feel free to use a more updated height slider if you choose.)
 * Ginevra Skin by SayaSims at The Sims Resource
 * Grilled-Cheese-Aspiration's Modified DJ Helmet (requires Get Together)

Development
The pack was developed initially in April of 2017, around the time that Volkonir Meets the Power Rangers was being written. While that story was originally written to both raise awareness of the Volkonir franchise and help promote the Lionsgate Power Rangers film, creativity took the reins. After some contact with Fandom staff to adopt the abandoned Emo Rangers Wiki, and some correspondence on Facebook and YouTube with series creators Chris Phillips and Nick Pittom, Sims knockoffs of the original six Emo Rangers soon found themselves appearing in the Volkonir special, along with parodies of the 1993 and 2017 Power Rangers.

Pursuit of a way to import the Emo Rangers' suits into The Sims 4 gave way to a test image being released on April 8th of 2017, featuring Vicken as the Weeping Tears Ranger in a prototype suit. The Rangers' content for this pack continued to be developed while the Volkonir comic was being made, both as a Word file and in syndication on Mod the Sims. Around that same time, their wiki was also being reformatted to include content from season 2, as well as mentioning their 2015 Halloween special.

Helmet issues
The Emo shirts were fairly easy to make, but the Rangers ran into issues when it came to their belts - and especially their helmets. Exact meshes were ruled too difficult to secure at the time. Instead, the majority of Rangers had to used a modified DJ helmet mesh from Grilled-Cheese-Aspiration on Tumblr. That mod had the same recolor stipulations as did AmiSwift's Iron Man and Spider-Man Civil War helmet mesh, as used for The Many Masks of Ciem Kit. As a consequence, the PNGs had to be offered separate from the mesh, with instructions to enter them as new swatches to the mesh manually via Sims 4 Studio. The only Ranger that was spared from having to endure this process was Luke, as his Chaos Mohawk helmet was by-definition in need of the mohawk that the default helmet in Get Together already came with.

In Volkonir Meets the Power Rangers, the same mesh was also used with some crudely-made 2017 Lionsgate Power Ranger UV recolors to help assist in bringing the film Rangers into the special. These helmet recolors and the recolored Get to Work space alien suits used for the 2017 Rangers were initially offered along with links to Ranger Sims on the Gallery as tie-in offerings. However, this entire operation of DzMD mods for 2017 Power Rangers was later discontinued, due to AmiSwift's superior version on The Sims Resource.

Oddly enough, the 1993 Rangers' helmets were harder to adapt than the 2017 Rangers' helmets were, leading to their helmets merely being copy-pasted onto the Rangers' bodies whenever needed in a scene, after being extracted from Google image searches. So while the Emo Rangers' helmets required the least effort and looked the most terrible in real life, their helmets looked a lot better in The Sims 4 than those of the Power Rangers they were parodies of!

Where's Mary Jane?
Mary Jane Greenfield was omitted from the pack for several reasons. The first was the toxic attitude of her real life actress, Krystal Moore, toward Dozerfleet staff. The second reason for this omission is that her Chronic Stoner suit is somehow way more intricate and detailed than John's, and more requiring of custom meshes, than could be excused by the development schedule and skill at meshing at Dozerfleet in that time period. The character only appearing in a one-off special years after the series ended, and being a total Mary Sue who (almost) doesn't even need the original team, also made her feel like an out-of-place entity that would have detracted from Volkonir Meets the Power Rangers, rather than added anything to it.

A fourth reason is that she is tonally a very different sort of "emo" from the Chelmsford crew, and struggles to ever actually be funny. Which is ironic, as Krystal in real life is a stand-up comedian. The Volkonir crossover short thrives on comedy, and it was hard to work any jokes around Mary Jane that would have improved the special's humor.

A fifth reason for her omission is that the team's appearances in what was fanonically late 2006 in Volkonir Meets the Power Rangers was based on how the team was starting to look for season 2, which was canonically set in early 2007 (even though it was delayed by MTV for release in late 2010.) The original special for Emo Rangers dated all the way back to late 2005. It was expanded into three additional episodes all throughout 2006, with a Christmas special set in December of 2006.

If Mary Jane as a high school teen from Boise were to be included on the team alongside Volkonir and the various Power Ranger iterations, then avoiding a paradox that could potentially break the already-fragile fabric of Emo Ranger "reality" would require the original six Emo Rangers to be aged up to their 2015 selves. The older crew had a much harder time with humor than their younger selves, and would have not been easy for fans of the original and of season 2 to recognize.

Chronic Stoner Ranger vs. continuity
Wishing to have at least some standards of decency for the special, John's reform in "Weed Better Sober Up" to the StraightXEdge Ranger was moved up in the timeline. In the original series timeline, he was the Chronic Stoner until some time in the spring of 2007. The special moves his reform to mid-December of around 2005 or 2006, so that he's already the StraightXEdge Ranger by the spring of 2007. Therefore, John is already the StraightXEdge Ranger when Volkonir and company meet him.

However, John does have to fight his evil clone Johnny, also in "Weed Better Sober Up," as a parody of the 2-parter "Return of the Green Ranger" from season 2 of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. Therefore, while the Chronic Stoner Ranger suit never shows up in the main storyline of Volkonir Meets the Power Rangers, a version of it is provided in this pack. Also, Milly Bays advertises a Chronic Stoner cosplay suit in the end credits on Mod the Sims, along with advertising the other suits.

Legacy
This Emo Rangers pack is not the first time a Power Rangers-related property has been adapted at Dozerfleet. In the early 90s, there were experiments with reimagining the Rangers as penguins. In 1998, a spoof was written called Rainbow Jockeys. In 2008, a high schooler of the time and her friends were adapted for The Sims 2 as "Becka Rangers: Nemo Thunder," a mashup of Power Rangers Dino Thunder and Finding Nemo which was advertised on MySpace briefly. While there was some desire to follow this up with a Sims content pack for a sequel, none ever materialized. Tickle Fury and STF (Squeaky Toy Fascination) were all proposed follow-ups, but all rejected in the end. A mockup for a sequel made with HeroMachine was eventually submitted to DeviantArt on July 23rd of 2016, dubbed Becka Rangers: Dory Charge, combining Dino Charge with Finding Dory.

While not included in the actual pack on the DzMD download page, aged-up versions of the Emo Rangers can be found on the Sims 4 Gallery, based on their appearances in the 2015 special on Chris Phillips' channel.

Distribution
The pack's DzMD distribution was finalized on June 2nd of 2020. The Rangers' apartment in season 1 of the series was adapted to Sims 4 and uploaded to the Gallery in 2017, along with an earlier release of the Rangers and their 2015 aged-up selves.