The Devil Incarnate 2: Lily Edition and Its Consequences

Collection of goodies from 2DI :)

The first time I ever played WACCA was nearly 4 years ago. I went shopping with some friends (it was one of my first times buying girl clothes, actually) and decided to stop at Round1 to try out the game since I'd heard about it from some friends. I never realized how much it would become a part of my life, but I'm really glad it is.

I started to pick up the game seriously in 2023. For some reason though, even though I was super hooked onto the game at the time, I had a sneaking suspicion that it would just become another hobby that I'd ditch within a couple years and get old. Especially because the game was stuck in EOS state, I didn't have any hope for anything new to really strike the community, and I figured I myself would just get bored of it quickly.

In 2024, though, a customs scene started to develop in the background. Since then, it has really rejuvenated my interest in the game. It's had ups and downs since then, and there are times when I'd had simply lost faith in the project. But I couldn't just leave the game when it had done so much for me, connected me with so many friends, motivated me to improve throughout my life. I continued to believe, despite everything.

I'm honored to have participated in a handful of sightread tournaments now and met so many friends through these events, but 2DI was something different. Initially, it seemed like the event was going to be of similar scale to last year, but that was quickly proven wrong. The tournament DOUBLED in size since last year, both in attendance (making it the largest WACCA tournament ever in the west) and the amount of content it had to offer. I cannot overstate how ridiculous of a feat this is. Leading up to the tourney, I had kept telling myself there will never be another WACCA event like this, of this scale. It didn't seem like it could go up from there. But as I look back and think about the size of the WACCA community in 2023, the result of a game that had been dead for a year and thus its community was too, and how much that SAME community has exponentially grown in size ever since, I have so much hope for the future of WACCA. Even post-EOS, with events like these, I think this community will continue to grow as long as we collectively put in the effort to foster this growth.

Tournaments and events like these have inspired myself and so many others I know to start pushing the game. I started grinding WACCA seriously after stumbling upon the Boston INNOVATED WACCA tourney VOD back in 2023 through Isaac/nb1rs's Twitter. Several of my now great friends were inspired to push the game due to Zenith Arcade Championship in 2024 and last year's The Devil Incarnate. Not to mention, Isaac's WACCA showcase at SGDQ 2024 inspired so many of today's top players to pick up the game. These have all left such a major impact on the state of the community that can't be understated. And for me, 2DI has acted as a second wind both in wanting to grind the game as well as create for it. Seeing the product of everyone's hard work over the weekend, both in skill and in charts, was so beautiful to see. So many players travelled from all over North America, all for this one event. And I think I can safely say we all feel inspired for the future of the game, and the community behind it. 

Onto my personal experiences now!

I attended last year's rendition of TDI and instantly knew I had to come again this year. There was such a particular energy from last year that I really enjoyed and wanted to replicate this year. As soon as the announcement dropped I instantly booked my flights. It would have felt like a missed opportunity to not fly out for any major WACCA event like this. Shoutout to my roomies Ethan, Kass, and Hazel!!! You three made this trip so much more worth it than it already was and I'm super glad I got to bond with you all :') I'm also very glad Ethan and I were able to convince Kass and Hazel to come last minute (shoutout Big Walk). 

roomie selfie w/ Arcade Legacy in the background. why do i look photoshopped in here

Quick tangent but I tried Culver's for the first (and second) time(s) this trip!!! I meant to last year but it never ended up being convenient for me. I'll always be an In-N-Out diehard but I'll admit Culver's is probably the next best chain. The sourdough melt was really good, and definitely will be my go-to from now on.

We also almost got trafficked! How fun!

We were notified by other groups that the hotel we were originally supposed to stay in ended up being super sketchy and that there was a good chance it was a site for trafficking. Thankfully, we rebooked at a different hotel mere days later, completely unaware of this situation. I'm glad we dodged a bullet unintentionally. If you're staying in the area, please stay away from the Quality Inn in Sharonville. Seriously, it's bad.

After checking in at our hotel, we met lots of familiar friends at the arcade. Since last year, I've always said that Arcade Legacy sucks up all of the life out of Cincinnati, Ohio, and keeps it all to itself, because it is easily the most lively and welcoming place within the entire metro area that I've been to. I will always recommend a trip there. Not only did I see a bunch of familiar faces but I also got to meet a bunch of new ones over the course of the weekend. It was really cool to me that this was the first major WACCA event for a lot of attendees, and I got to learn a lot about others in the community :) Shoutout to annbread and Vivids for making really cute prints just for the event :D really goes to show how much of the community came together for this. Thursday night was pretty chill, most of us were just running WACCA free play to get a feel for the cabs and try out some test charts. 

oh yeah this also happened. shoutout annbread for the art

Friday was the WACCA Reverse bracket. I was admittedly terrified of everyone else in the top 12 range. Although I had worked so much on consistency since last year, my nerves were through the roof. I was on edge throughout the entire day, as I also had to balance out TOing and commentating and playing in the tournament myself. There were a lot of technical difficulties and human error that could've been prevented with some better planning. As for human error, I do think for future tournaments we could easily reduce this by having a designated tournament organizer select each song, instead of leaving it to the players. Ultimately, there is less of a chance for human error from 1 person compared to from 4 people. It did suck losing our entire break period due to delays, but we've learned a lot from this experience. Regardless, the environment got so overwhelming for me that I had to step outside about half an hour before my first set in the tournament. Even that was just not enough for me. I had been very scared of the other top players playing in this tournament for a while at this point, and I knew I had a lot of friends cheering me on. I had been practicing nerve control a lot recently, but with the added stress from earlier in the day I ended up underperforming in my waterfall set.

There's something to say about tournament format and how it affects certain players. Last year, players were placed into pools, and then advanced to a top 8 round robin stage before top 4 double elim. This year, the waterfall format only gave one guaranteed match to warm up for top 8 finalists. I was simply just not able to warm up for the entire day, and even though I had practiced trying to score well off of no warmup for the past couple months, I ultimately let my nerves get the best of me.

I'm aware now that the kind of run I achieved last year was only really possible because I didn't really have nerves beyond my first AM, and thus I was able to sweep through the rest of my matches and play the best I had ever played in a tournament setting. This year, it was hard to gain momentum, especially against an even tougher lineup of players. My nerves got even worse as the tourney went on. The double Odin AM itself had such a large effect on me. It was honestly throughout the entire weekend that I choked lots of my matches due to simply losing focus due to nerves. I have so much to learn in terms of nerve control and playing in a tournament setting, despite how many I've already played in thus far. Regardless of this though, I can't be mad at all at the results. Everyone played really well and deserved their placement in the tournament, and most of all I'm very proud of my friends for achieving what they did during that tournament. Congrats to Shep for taking it home, Isaac and ANOM for their podium placements, and of course twodey, PiGuy, and Thuggles for the great matches on Friday. 

Friday night post-tourney was a wild experience I hope I'll never forget.

The thing about Sharonville, Ohio, is that like many American suburbs, there is virtually nothing within walking distance. There were only a handful of food options available at 1 in the morning, being Waffle House, the gas station, my hotel's snack bar, and food delivery. We initially went as a group of about 12 to Waffle House, before realizing there was only one poor worker in the building at the time. We decided to split up and try ordering food delivery for our group of 7, and the only option that seemed to deliver within a reasonable time was Taco Bell.

An hour and a half later, we would find out that our $100 Taco Bell order was stolen by an Uber Eats driver. I was eventually refunded, but that wouldn't solve the issue which was all of us dealing with starvation. We then turned to our next closest option, the gas station. Coincidentally, they had just closed the building (it was 3am at this point) and wouldn't re-open until 3:30. We then walked over to Waffle House, but unfortunately even though they had more staff at this point, they were also even more overwhelmed with orders. We didn't want to ruin their night, so we ultimately just went back to the gas station and sat outside until they opened up again.

The 2DI Starvation Incident - 3:17AM EDT 9/12/2026

We finally were able to grab food at 3:30, but were so tired that we decided to go back to right we were sitting and just eat dinner there. It was such a dire situation but made for a really special bonding experience. I don't think any of us expected to be in that kind of situation that night, but it really brought us all together. Thank you guys.

how it genuinely feels

Saturday was CHUNITHM and WACCA SRT day! Overall I'm quite happy with my performance in CHUNITHM. I was expecting to get out quite quickly but I'm pretty happy with my run throughout that tournament (and even picked up some rating along the way). Shoutout to muffin, sypt, Katie, and Shep for the matches! I don't have much to say about the tourney honestly (besides Aleph-0 MAS being really funny and sorry Katie for the Pyrophilia pick), but I also want to shoutout Trax for the amazing tuna onigiri. Lifechanging stuff honestly, I can't wait to have another one of your onigiri.

WACCA SRT was incredible all the way through. I had anticipated there would be a few charts that were just total misses, but every single one was really good (yes, even HELL FLAME -輪廻-). I'm glad that the team took the time to really make sure every chart was QA'd super well this year despite the increase in the amount of featured content, it's a huge contrast from the state of the charts during last year's tourney.

My favorite charts of the whole event at the moment (in no particular order) have to be: déjà vu, Fixer INF, Synthesis., LiGHTHOUSE, and Rubber Grabber.

I also felt very honored to have been selected to chart for this tournament as well, particularly the LCQ charts. Aside from Death by Glamour (Yuta Imai Remix) and Meteor Blade being well known charts of mine that were included for fun, I was asked to chart Rush Away by t+pazolite, a song that I had been meaning to chart ever since I had started charting, but never got around to because of the sheer difficulty of cutting the song down to game length in an ideal way. Somehow, I drafted it within 2 or 3 days, one of the fastest charting timelines for me ever. me & u by succducc was an impromptu inclusion. Isaac had charted half of it a while ago and I asked to pick it up, and had recently gotten bored enough to finish the chart, so we included it in the set. Seemingly, all of my charts were positively received, so thank you all for your kind words! It's really inspired me to keep charting for future events (see: MAGFest 2027 please please please come to my MAGFest tournament, maybe even 3DI?).

There's a lot I could talk about from the SRT alone, but there are a few favorite moments I want to point out:

Seeing Trust INF was a really awesome experience. I actually knew about this chart beforehand, since Ethan had consulted me for help/QA at some point (we figured it would have been unfair for me to play the chart anyway). As someone who really enjoys that kind of chart, I'm glad we now have some resemblance of a bridge between Trackmaker and MNK INF. It was also just really fun seeing people's reactions to the patterns, especially since this type of chart is in a relatively unexplored niche within the game thus far. as well as teasing it to people without them knowing it would be in this showcase. If you look closely towards the end of this clip, you can see Ethan and I smirking at each other lol.

I'm so glad I got to play DOOOPE!! in the bracket. I had ruled it out in my head as a possibility of showing up since it was a publicly known chart, but as of recent it has easily become one of my favorite P*Light songs. The selection of songs in that stage as a whole was honestly just a treat, shoutout Tiiger for putting that together :) That set made me really happy, as you can see here:

In general, my reaction with PiGuy to ONOMATO Pairing!!! INF was really funny to look back on. I love how it ended up taking elements from all three of my LCQ charts as well.

Seeing Mazy Metroplex INF finally become real was very surreal. I had heard rumors of this chart for years, but I'm glad that it is now finally becoming playable, and it really got the glowup it needed. It had been a popularly demanded chart for a long time, so being able to play it myself in bracket was such a treat, let alone it only being the second song of the set.

The reveal of Death by Glamour (Yuta Imai Remix) was really funny, looking back. I had known this was going to pop up somewhere in the bracket, but I knew in the moment that I had to surrender the commentary mic to someone else in this scenario. There was no way I would be able to hide my reaction otherwise:

The audience karaoke throughout the event was really surreal. The crowd during M@GICAL☆CURE! LOVE SHOT! and BATTLE NO.1 (DJ Myosuke Remix) was absolutely insane. The penlights were also such a great idea, shoutout to everyone who brought some :D really added so much to the energy overall. It was really loud in there, but unfortunately stream mics cut out a lot of it:

The reveal of Fixer INF still remains very special to me. I honestly love how Ethan and Dj gradually hinted at it, as well as how moved Dj was by our grand finals match from last year that he decided to chart an INF chart for the song. I smile whenever Fixer comes on shuffle on my playlist, because I remember how cute of a moment that this was :') let alone the chart is just really cool lol.

Even though I overall enjoyed HELL FLAME -輪廻-, there were several moments throughout the night where I had threatened that I wanted to pick up Dj and carry him and parade him around like a trophy or like a fish I caught. Absolutely not to the same extent as I threatened others last year, but still a very funny moment. Also this middle finger into the final section of the chart:

The double Bad Apple INF AM into a second AM in a row on Night of Nights Camellia Remix was so hype. I still think about the crowd reaction after those two moments, as well as the life tie at the end of the set. Genuinely unreal set, I can't imagine how it must've felt to watch that happen.

In general it was really fun watching people's reactions to the LCQ charts. I had to purposely conceal myself the entire time, especially with Meteor Blade, which was really funny for several reasons:

Ethan shushing ANOM here is the cherry on top.

The fakeout never gets old.

It's also worth mentioning that Rush Away was actually supposed to be the last song of the set, since it was supposed to build up in difficulty, but there was some miscommunication I suppose. Either way, I think it ultimately was a great way to build up to the reveal that it was indeed me who charted the entire set. 

The title drop of The Devil Incarnate was really funny to me too. I straight up ignored the first 30 seconds of the chart just yelling about the title drop LOL

LiGHTHΘUSE was so surreal to experience. When I said that it could not have been QA'd enough, I really meant to say that it could not have been QA'd more. Genuine delight of a chart and song combo, and I cannot applaud the charters and Lundy enough for their hard work (as well as the video artist Transendium and jacket/acrylic artist RAM/@TenHeavenly!). Check it out here.

In retrospect, I can't even be bummed I didn't play the final set, because I would've broken down in tears in the middle of the final song.

The triple combo of Virtual Architecture (a song I'd been meaning to chart for a while) into Rubber Grabber (fan favorite chart) into Stardust was the final blow to my emotions. I started crying in the middle of Rubber Grabber, just reflecting on how special this moment was, how lucky I was to be in this room at this time doing what I was, surrounded by a special group of people who care this much for a game that has been "dead" for over 4 years. If Rubber Grabber was the one that knocked me down, Stardust finished me for good.

I've never been an extreme fan of tn-shi's music but had admired them mostly from a distance. And admittedly, Stardust on its own could probably never make me cry. But it was the new context in which this song was introduced in this tournament, as essentially a sort of end credits song, and the new meaning it would hold in WACCA, that really got me bad.

Isaac had been teasing the idea of introducing the blue-haired girl from the WACCA 4koma for a long time now, but to see her finally become realized as a star-themed character, let alone with a BUNNY companion of all things was like getting stabbed 20 times in the heart. I genuinely adore them so much. Stardust being the song to introduce Star is so beautiful and so fitting, especially since they had commissioned artwork of her to replace the AI art that tn-shi had originally uploaded Stardust with on YouTube. (It's also a crazy coincidence that Star was being conceptualized at the same time I was charting for Sakuracon 2026, using the alias スターリー・バニー, or "starry bunny" LOL. Either way this was Highkey targeted against me and was guaranteed to kill on impact lol. Shoutout to riklio, moca, and Gil for helping bring her to life.)

Looking back now, there was so much foreshadowing here.
I should've seen it coming.

I cried so much the first time I was able to play Stardust. To me, this new character is the culmination of this entire community's efforts to continue to give life to the game, despite it never receiving official service again. Our efforts have been so meaningful and so impactful that we have all collectively given birth to a Star, who represents the future of this game and this community. And so, Stardust will never fail to make me cry, knowing that there is so much more in store for Star and the WACCA community at large, and that it is a gift that we were able to ever get here in the first place.

The WACCA community is in such a special spot, I've realized, where because our game is no longer officially supported, we know that we have nothing left but ourselves. I like to believe that we are more unified as a community because we share this sentiment that ultimately, we are the ones who still are able to make something out of this game, and thus we have to work together to keep this game alive. This is not something that most other rhythm game communities have. There's always some sort of division between developers and players, but here, the developers are also players, and players we know well and personally. And yet, we are closer than any other community-based rhythm game, like osu! or Beat Saber, because there's only so many of us. It's a really unique position to be in, and I'm extremely grateful for it.

All this to say: I can't wait for what the future has to offer for WACCA. From 2DI and meeting everyone there, I've become so inspired to create again. I don't expect to be able to top 2DI with what Ethan and I will be doing for this coming MAGFest tournament, but we're going to try our damn best to do as much as we possibly can and make it a memorable experience.

Thank you to everyone who was involved with and worked on 2DI, whether through TOing, tech support, charting, artists, even just people who attended and hung out. Special thanks to Isaac and Dj for running the whole thing and making this such a successful event. Can't wait for next year :)

Psst! Check out the SRT VOD here in case you missed it (massive thanks to Jaio for stream setup + VOD editing!!!!!).