Yearning for Meaning: Maddy Thorson’s Super Mario World Romhacks and the Metamodernist Impulse

Sincerity and irony, hope and cynicism, grand narratives and their rejection. These pairings often appear as binaries that characterize modernist (early 20th century) and postmodern (late 20th century) thought. If modernism is the last attempt to hold on to a coherent whole of experience and a sense of humanity’s progress, then postmodernism is the acceptance of that coherence breaking down into fragmented pieces and the acknowledgement that the world is on a crash course for potential destruction.

But, more recently, the above dichotomies have begun to coexist more readily, and artists have developed self-aware notions of growth and accomplishment. This is what’s known as metamodernism (early 21st century), a combination of or movement between modernism and postmodernism. As Luke Turner writes in his introduction to the idea, “Ours is a generation raised in the ‘80s and ‘90s, on a diet of The Simpsons and South Park, for whom postmodern irony and cynicism is a default setting, something ingrained in us. However, despite, or rather because of this, a yearning for meaning – for sincere and constructive progression and expression – has come to shape today’s dominant cultural mode.” It’s not simply a return to the naivety of modernism though, but a more self-aware version of it, acknowledging what postmodernism taught us without falling into its wholly desolate outlook.

So where does Maddy Thorson fit into this? After Thorson’s magnum opus, Celeste, she turned toward Super Mario World romhacks. For context, a romhack is a fan creation of a new “game” using the decompiled engine and assets of the original, sometimes with additional materials added. While Thorson built one SMW romhack before Celeste, 2015’s Super Mario World Remix, it was after Celeste that Thorson unleashed her personality in the medium, and this personality is one steeped in the metamodern position, where irony is the base state – yet she longs for a type of sincere progress and expression while acknowledging the humor and horrors of the world along the way.

The first of her two solo romhacks since her return, Super “Sonic Saves the World” World, was shared among romhack players in late 2021, but it wasn’t published on Super Mario World Central until 2023. In it, the player, as Sonic the Hedgehog, meets a giant brain named “Brian,” who immediately acknowledges the world as reality and Sonic as a fictional character within it. This is silly, but Brian says truly sincere, poetic lines like “this is the weather for wistful sighing in the reading nook,” which carries such an affective sense that one can’t help but stop for a moment to consider it. On their journey, Sonic comes out as transgender, goes to Mars to deliver food to (and eventually destroy) Elon Musk, recreates the entirety of Celeste starring a single Goomba, and has a BDSM-style conversation with the player, which they can opt out of if they do not consent. While all of these happenings are ironic and meta, they occur along the serious throughline of Sonic trying to save the world. There is earnestness in the conversations with Brian along the way, which appear in cutscene-style levels between the more action-oriented gameplay.

In Masterpiece, published in 2025, Thorson becomes even more unhinged. Here, Sonic is trying to create a masterpiece of a videogame, but their inspiration (Sonic comes out as nonbinary partway through) is lacking, and many of their attempts land short of creative genius. Again, there are many ironic moments: there are two levels based around collecting Monster Energy drink powerups, a level titled “American Justice” about collecting currency and dodging Bullet Bills, and many callbacks to previous romhacks that Thorson worked on. Again, Thorson pushes the edgy humor, yet the attempt to create a masterpiece is earnest. One can’t help but read this romhack in the context of Thorson herself trying to recapture the magic of Celeste in her newer work, especially in the aftermath of Earthblade’s cancellation in early 2025. Everything is silly, but underneath that everything is also serious.

So what happens at the ends of these two romhacks? In both cases, Sonic fails at their ultimate quests: they neither save the world nor create a masterpiece. In Super “Sonic Saves the World” World, near the end of the romhack, a message box appears. It reads,

Q: Have we saved the world yet?

A: Nothing you’ve done so far has been remotely related to saving the world.

This is funny, but it’s also heartbreaking. Then, at the end of the credits, text appears in the background: “Okay maybe we didn’t manage to save the world after all. In retrospect that might have been an unrealistic goal. I mean look at us. We’re a hedgehog in shoes. I’m just happy to be here. With you.” The turn toward pathos is palpable. We didn’t accomplish our modernist goal, but we didn’t let it collapse into postmodern hopelessness. Instead, we’ve found a sincere, metamodernist solace in our connections both in general and here in particular between creator and player.

In Masterpiece, something similar happens. In the course of their journey, Sonic turns to product placement, political commentary, classic romhacks, and even Thorson’s old levels to try to make a new masterpiece, but nothing works. During the first ending of the romhack, Sonic sits down in their own empty grave and waits for the screen to fade to black. In the second ending, Sonic enters a level titled “Masterpiece,” a hot mess of a level with intentionally painful jumps and messy aesthetics. In both cases, the objective masterpiece is beyond reach.

But things do happen. Throughout the adventure, Sonic makes their mother proud, comes out as both bisexual and nonbinary, and even creates what the player reads as a subjective masterpiece. If the masterpiece isn’t the level by that name, then it’s at least the romhack as a whole. It may not be perfect, but it’s perfect for Maddy Thorson, for Sonic, and for the player. If personal things happening to Sonic is the theme of this sincerity amidst the chaos, then it is the most appropriate thing in the romhack that the final overworld event, after Sonic completes “Masterpiece” the level, is the revealing of letters spelling out “your gay.” Again humorous, especially with its purposeful misspelling, but also an honest revelation of the self. This is what we can take away: try to save the world and to make the perfect creation, but also know it’s enough to grow into and be yourself.

There are echoes of the distant past in these stories. One might think of the Hero’s Journey of Joseph Campbell and how the hero sometimes doesn’t secure their boon but finds instead something just as good. This doesn’t mean that metamodernism is a bunk notion though. Instead, it’s a focus on something premodern, which we’ve known all along – that the personal matters, and that we can do good even if we can’t be perfect. Have your funny jokes and lamentations about the end of the world, but be sincere in your expressions and do what you can to help the world, each other, and yourself.

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Sara Hovda is a transgender writer from rural Minnesota who currently attends the MFA program in poetry at UC-Riverside. Her work can be found online at SaraHovda.com.