When you’re a young kid in the 00s who hasn’t quite figured out that you’re trans yet, there’s certain pieces of media you fixate on. Things that give you Feelings that you don’t fully understand or know how to explain. This is particularly weird with media that is created by people that are absolutely not trying to create a trans message and would probably spit on in your face if you implied they were. Polyjuice potions in Harry Potter, the entirety of Ranma, and, of course, the "Boy Who Would Be Queen" episode of Fairly OddParents.

There's a bizarre nature to these kinds of projects. The creators are so single minded in their idea of how things are "supposed" to be and so consistent in using things they consider "wrong" as a cheap gag, it kind of swerves back around to give some kids (or least me) some young gender euphoria. A lot of FOP falls under this umbrella, but The Boy Who Would Be Queen episode toys with some interesting attempts at examining the idea of gender. Timmy is magically transformed to become "Timantha" to understand his crush, and discovers how his tastes haven't really changed as a girl. He still likes soap operas and comics, but now he's supposed to be ashamed of the latter rather than the former. He discovers his crush falls into the same problem. Trixie likes comics and video games but feels the pressure of society forcing her to fill the traditional gender roles. The prison of gender hurts all parties involved. What's particularly easy to read as queer in the episode is how both Timmy and Trixie are presenting themselves. Timmy's obviously dressed as Timantha, but Trixie is also trying to pass as a boy. In these disguises, these two can express genuine, vulnerable feelings to each other that they will never express in the rest of the show. Trixie tells Timantha, a girl she's known for just a few hours, like a normal straight girl would, "If only you were a boy, then I'd date you for sure." The gag is obviously supposed to be that Timmy's crush is still out of reach, but its so on the nose its hard not to read into it. To a young 10 year old who was just lectured and ostracized for agreeing with the girls that "girls are better than boys", this episode sent a chill up my spine. And I wasn't the only one. If you dive into fanfiction communities, you'll find more than a few stories that center around Timmy choosing to permanently stay as Timantha so that Trixie can have a real "friend."

Much of Breakin' Da Rules rehashes various plots from the early FOP canon. Timmy becomes a dog. Timmy becomes microscopic. Timmy fights aliens. Timmy and friends trapped in a video game. And, of course, Timmy becomes Timantha.

There was a time in my life where I would focus in on that ten minute segment where you're Timantha, trying to ignore the "could this GET any more silly?" quips. Begging for something more, I would spin elaborate narratives in my mind where this segment could go on forever. I never finished the game proper, that segment was all I needed.

Now I'm an adult and I can do two things:

1. Mod the game to add the Timantha face onto Timmy full time, which I sat down and learned how to do.

2. Understand how deeply bad this game is past that ten minute segment.

There's certainly ambition here. When you crack into a game's files, you get a greater understanding of just how much work went into the game. There's dozens of different models that Timmy plays as throughout the game. Timantha, Dog Timmy, Superhero Timmy, Robin Hood Timmy, Greek Toga Timmy, and so on and so forth. Modding the game required me to manually change the eyes of every single one of these models. The levels themselves clearly built a lot of assets. Each level has a different gimmick, sometimes multiple gimmicks. The time travel level required a bunch of different textures and assets built for all three of the time periods you travel to. I can certainly respect how much effort went into that.

But its hard not to compare this to its successor Shadow Showdown. The other FOP focuses in on the fantastical and allows the developers to build huge, elaborate levels with bizarre mechanics and designs. Breakin' Da Rules sticks with the human world and the established FOP episodes, to its detriment. The level centered around Timmy's neighborhood is empty and miserable, its almost haunting. It doesn't feel lonely in Shadow Showdown when you're journeying through someone's dream or investigating a spooky mansion. It would be easy to call this a beta for Shadow Showdown until you look at all the same files I did. If they centered in on developing Timmy's central model and mechanics, even if it meant losing my girl Timantha, the game might at least feel alright to play. But they had to program all the ways these different models had to move and it clearly bogged the game down. The actual art decision and level design are messy, but at least that can be something I know they learned from moving forward. The mechanics themselves are similarly flawed. Each level requires collecting five stars for a wish, which typically involves "press this button to progress" with no change to the actual gameplay. The game operates on the life system, which most platformers had moved past already. Losing all your lives get punted past to the last save point, which forces you to repeat tedious and dull levels just to reach whatever stupid thing trapped you for so long. You just get the sense this game suffered from poor direction even beyond being an underfunded licensed game in the 00s. Its a real shame but its tempered with the face that the sequel is so much better.

And also, I learned to mod shit in the pursuit of fulfilling some childhood dreams, so I gotta give that to it.