Devil May Care is a Comic Fantasy webcomic by DukeStewart
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It follows the off-beat day-to-day of the ill-tempered Valeria and sweet-hearted Kahurangi Te Kanawa working their 9-5 job as an angel and devil on the respective shoulders of humanity. Ironically, Valeria is the angel and Rangi is the demon. Now they're stuck working with each other to enlighten and corrupt complete strangers.
Can an angel with nothing but raw nerve work with a demon who's all-heart? Would she kill him if she could? Can she learn to like him, or at least tolerate him?
The webcomic can be read on Tapas Media here
This webcomic provides examples of the following tropes:
- Ambiguously Bi: Valeria seems genuinely offended when Rangi denies wanting to get into her pants, implying that she on some level finds him attractive. However, she also gets heated when she sees the woman Nidhi plans on cheating on her wife with stripping down by her apartment window.
- Being Evil Sucks: As a shoulder devil, Rangi can only get paid if he uses his position to tempt people into doing the wrong thing. The only problem is that he's a Nice Guy and doesn't have the heart to make anyone do anything genuinely bad, only doing it because he needs the money. So when he's stuck with an easy mark (like a woman who's about to cheat on her wife), he's understandably mortified.
- Color-Coded Speech: Valeria and Rangi has a supernatural influence on the people they impart advice to, but only when they genuinely mean what they say. This is demonstrated visually when their Speech Bubbles turn different colors; blue for Valeria, red for Rangi.
- Compelling Voice: While not exactly Mind Control, angels and demons have a subconscious influence on the humans they are put in charge of. They can influence them in any manner, but they have to actual mean the advice they give and they can only get paid if the advice they give corresponds with their alignment (good advice for angels, bad advice for demons).
- Good Angel, Bad Angel: Shoulder angels and shoulder demons are apparently humans who are paid to act as other people's conscience (to foster goodness or corruption respectively). They are tiny, invulnerable, and invisible to humans while in this form, and while their words can influence a person, they can only have an actual effect if they genuinely mean what they say.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Valeria's default falls somewhere on the spectrum between Tranquil Fury and Unstoppable Rage and fluctuates wildly. Since she Hates Everyone Equally, her temper makes it really hard to do her job as a shoulder angel since she can only do her job if she genuinely cares about what she's saying.
- Healing Factor: Angels and demons have a long and bloody history and have routinely tried to kill each other over the years. Because of this, a clause was put in their contracts that makes them heal fast—painfully fast—making them immortal while on the job.
- Magic A Is Magic A: When shoulder angels and devils are working with a client as their conscience, said client interprets anything the shoulder angels and devils say which has thoroughly heartfelt meaning behind it as their own thoughts—whether or not said angel or devil is actually trying to influence them.
- Oh, Crap!: Valeria starts talking about how their current client, Nahid, hates herself for putting up with her wife's neglect and selfishness and that things were probably never going to get better, so starting a relationship with a woman who seemed genuinely interested in and compatible with her wasn't even wrong—just a matter of survival, he realizes to his horror that she really means what she's saying...and so Nahid can hear her.
- Our Angels Are Different: "Shoulder angel" seems to be a job which normal beings can take. While working in this capacity, Valeria gains wings (which she doesn't know how to use) and a halo, as well as a smartphone with information on her clients. She also gains the ability to subconsciously influence her client if she says something with sincere meaning behind it, which the client appears to interpret as their own thoughts.
- Our Demons Are Different: Ditto, but shoulder devil. Unfortunately for Rangi, though, he doesn't get wings, though he does get a tail and little horns.
- Power Incontinence: Being the open book that he is, speaking from the heart comes easy for Rangi. Thing is, he's a Nice Guy who's job is to make people do bad things, so he will sometimes give good advice by accident. This is demonstrated at the beginning when he tries to make a father paranoid and peek as the contents of his daughter's phone, only to retract at the thought that this would violate their shared trust.
- Spicy Latina: The ill-tempered Valeria is Hispanic, often coloring her dialogue with Gratuitous Spanish.
- Teach Him Anger: Because angels and demons can only impart their divine advice to their charges if they genuinely mean what they say, Valeria can only have an effect on the people she gives advice to when she's screaming it in a rage. This is demonstrated when she yells at Rangi that he should stop being an Extreme Doormat and that he should stand up for himself, only for Len (an elderly charity-worker they were in charge of) to suddenly become assertive and stand up for a coworker being harassed by a group of hoodlums that has been harassing them.
