Flaky Pastry

A webcomic by Félix Lavallée, which started in 2005 and is ongoing, with updates every Friday.

Flaky Pastry is a Low Fantasy Sitcom featuring the (mis)adventures of three college roommates, who have to deal with landlord dragons, vindictive halfling mages, impossibly large dungeons, and a whole host of other Dungeons & Dragons-esque characters and situations.

The three main characters are:

• Nitrine, an unusually intelligent (read: about as smart as an average human) goblin girl with green hair. Loves inventing things with dubious purposes. Later learned to make clones of herself (or anything she wanted) using her imagination.
• Marelle, the Team Mom, who is addicted to learning and has been studying at the university for a very long time. Has Unusual Ears, making her look suspiciously like a Catgirl, but try telling her that.
• Zintiel, a sociopathic High Elf. Not strictly a student, but tags along with Nitrine and Marelle when she's bored. Surprisingly strong, and a dab hand with apocalyptic magic. Was due to be married to an Elven prince but ran away on their wedding day. Is apparently old friends with Nitrine.

Flaky Pastry may be found here.

Tropes used in Flaky Pastry include:

• Alt Text: Starting from strip 92.
• Ancient Artifact: The Transcendental Reality Rearrangement Device.
• And Now for Something Completely Different: The "Croissant's Corner" strips, where Series Mascot Croissant presents extra info on the Flaky-verse, interviews with the characters, (mostly) non-canonical nonsense, and other manners of filler.
• Anything That Moves: Nitrine.
• Artifact of Death: Again, the Transcendental Reality Rearrangement Device. Though it's unclear if using it would cause someone to die, what it does certainly sounds like it would cause death, and not just that of the user.
• Ax Crazy: Zintiel, so much.
  • Prism, too, but only when her true prime directive, "Rainbow Love Child", is activated.
• Badass Bookworm: The neighbour.
• Be Careful What You Wish For
  • To elaborate a bit Kurt, Nitrine's human boyfriend, becomes irritated by Nitrine's seeming disinterest in a serious relationship. Nitrine, who is a goblin, sees the world differently from Kurt and does not operate by the same standards. Thus, Kurt chooses the only logical option --brain washing -- and changes it so that Nitrine will operate by human standards of decency. Zintiel explains why this is actually a really bad idea.
• Berserk Button: Never call Marelle a cat-girl.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Mona Theist, of the Sisters of Holy Retribution.
• Bi the Way: Nitrine
  • Marelle and Zintiel, as they don't show obvious attraction to women at first, but are married in one of the latest story arcs, which takes place 400 years into the future, so they may not hold those orientations in the present.)
• Bring My Brown Pants: Tares could have benefited from wearing some darker clothes here.
• Catgirl: Marelle, though she insists that she is not one, and gets annoyed when people suggest it.
• Chaotic Neutral: Zintiel and Nitrine can both easily be identified as this, while Zintiel is this by choice it is revealed that Nitrine on a racial level just operates this was since she is a Goblin.
• Church Militant: It's not really clear if Sister Mona Theist is this or a Badass Preacher. Given she belongs to the "Sisters of Holy Retribution", and considers it appropriate behavior to go around swinging a BFS at "evil doers", it's probably Church Militant.
• Cleavage Window: Nitrine's super-suit has one.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Morgana.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Tracy Ace, the university professor.
• Comically Missing the Point: Something terrible, indeed.
• Crossdresser: Leslie, a very androgynous male, who is often mistaken for a girl. This might have something to do with his part-time job as a barmaid.
  • Later on, he's Mistaken for Gay.
    • Leslie is however 'very' guilty of missing gender as well.
• Cute Little Fangs: Nitrine.
• Cute Monster Girl: Nitrine, a female goblin, looks like a short, cute woman with green hair and lips. The male goblins are classic goblin ugly.
• Dungeon Crawling: The trio had to do a supposedly 100-floor dungeon crawl to retrieve a MacGuffin in the earliest story arc.
• The Everyman: Kurt. His relationship with Nitrine is said to be his one oddity. Well that, and he's kind of short at only five foot four.
• Fake-Out Make-Out: "I should hide my face or something."^[1]
• Flat What: Probably the only reasonable response to Damian's "secret technique."
• Foreshadowing: Mona's Wall of Text in the background of this comic reveals her Church Militant background, although we don't get to see it until she turns up again over a hundred pages later.
• Funetik Aksent: most goblins. This is a good example.
• Funny Background Event: Here
• Future Me Scares Me: Future Marelle seems to have turned to the dark side.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Nitrine.
• A Glass in the Hand: Hey, what did that orange ever do to you?!
• Heroes Of Another Story: Leslie and Daran, here.
• Heroic Albino: The neighbour.
• Hot Amazon: Zintiel.
• I Kiss Your Hand: Arlen to Marelle.
• Innocent Innuendo: #90
• Jerk Jock: Gabriel
• Keet: Damian
• Knight Templar: Mona Theist: When Lawful Good attacks.
• Konami Code: Oddly enough, it's the only way to stop Prism from going on a mass murder spree anytime somebody says "Rainbow Love Child".
• Low Fantasy: The world is a lot like ours, except that it's populated by races straight out of a D&D sourcebook.
• Loveable Sex Maniac: Nitrine is not only bisexual, but will flirt with just about anything and anyone she thinks looks good.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Who would have guessed that the neighbour is Daran's father??
• MacGuffin: The Transcendental Reality Rearrangement Device, whose owner would not retrieve it himself and would rather sacrifice a bunch of treasure-happy dough-heads to the Dungeon Crawl on the off chance that they would find it and bring it back to him. He does this because it's too unstable to use magic directly on (so he couldn't just teleport it to himself) and he's too lazy to get it himself it's very dangerous for someone to touch it.
• Meaningful Name: Mona Theist and her sister Polly.
• Me's a Crowd: Nitrine
• Mid-Battle Tea Break: Here.
• Mismatched Eyes: Prism
• Multicolored Hair: Zintiel's purple-and-orange Prehensile Hair.
• Mysterious Waif: Daran seems to be one.
• Nice Guy: Kurt. Unfortunately, it doesn't do him much good.
• No Name Given: The neighbour.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Moirganae. Justified, since she's a product of the imagination.
• Overly Long Name: The girls' landlord's full name is Sir Manfred Adalbert Portrind of Frownshire the Twenty-fifth.
• Portal Network: The Elfgates (which, despite the name, was built by some race preceding the elves) are apparently a common method of travel from one universe to another, as featured here.
• Prehensile Hair: Zintiel
• The Professor: Nitrine, whose inventions are frequently nonsensical and often deadly.
• Prophecy Twist: The April Fools' Day strip. Everything it claimed actually had some truth to it.
• Punch-Punch-Punch Uh-Oh: Zintiel's "punch in the face" method of solving problems does not work on Prism.
• Punny Name: Sister Mona Theist. Not to be confused with her sister, Polly.
• Rapunzel Hair: Zintiel had this until it got cut off in a fight.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: When Prism's kill-mode is activated, she closes one eye and the other is seen to turn red.
• The Rival: Prism to Marelle, Mona to Zintiel, and Morgana to Nitrine.
• Series Mascot: Croissant, a character who acts as a host for the comic. She shows up occasionally to present extra material.
• Shout-Out: When using the Belt Buckle: "Henshin A-Go-Go, Baby!"
  • Also, this strip, to Metal Gear Solid.
  • This strip, too, to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
  • The neighbour's clothes in this strip are possibly a reference to Devil May Cry 3.
  • In this one Nitrine is making the Rage Comics "Forever Alone" face.
• Slap-On-The-Wrist Nuke: Omega Murder Blast obliterates the terrain in a substantial area around the target, but doesn't harm anyone other than the person it's centered on--after all, it's a single-target spell.
• Slap Slap Kiss: Nitrine and Morgana.
  • Zintiel and Graplen. Sorta.
• Snake Oil Salesman: One was encountered during the dungeon crawl.
• The Sociopath: It's revealed that Nitrine, as a goblin, literally lacks a conscience. Zintiel, in contrast, has a conscience but ignores it.
• Team Mom: Marelle
• Terrible Interviewees Montage: Nitrine and Marelle's search for a roommate in the first story arc.
• Trigger Phrase: Don't say "Rainbow Love Child" in front of Prism if you value your life.
• Unusual Ears: Almost all of the cast, except for the humans.
• Upgrade Artifact: Nitrine uses the Transcendental Reality Rearrangement Device to solve the problem of her belt requiring phenomenal amounts of energy to function for just thirty seconds.
• Wall of Weapons: Zintiel's wardrobe of weaponry.
• Webcomic Time: Lampshaded here.
• White-Haired Pretty Boy: According to Prism's Pulchritude Estimation Engine, the neighbour ranks an A.
• Wrench Wench: Nitrine, as well as possibly future-Marelle.
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Zintiel drives home how nasty what Kurt did to Nitrine really was.

1. ↑ Alt Text - Clearly that could be ANY disheveled white-haired guy and cat-eared lavender-haired girl!