The power of shipping shines within you!!
warning: page may contain deltarune spoilers (as well as spoilers for doki doki literature club in the "debunking misconceptions" segment)
So what IS krisei?
Krisei (more commonly known by the fandom as "kralsei") is the ship between kris and ralsei from deltarune. It is one of the most popular ships in the fandom, but also among the most controversal. Despite that though, it is my favorite.
While most people call the ship "kralsei," i personally think this shipname is kinda unbalanced; as it's literally just ralsei's name with a K at the start of it. So i prefer to call it "krisei" since the "kri-" is for kris, the "-ei" is for ralsei and the S can be for either of them; connecting the two together. As such: the ship will be referred to as "krisei" throughout this entire shrine.
Canon
Canonically, kris and ralsei are teammates and friends; however it is implied throughout the game (so far) that ralsei may have a crush on kris. They are seen together throughout most of chapter one, and many of their moments of "flirty banter" is solely optional in this chapter.
During the part where lancer sends the gang to prison, susie noticably gets her own cell while the two have to share one (which, to me, feels like a way more metal version of the "just one bed" trope)
This scene also gives us the first of many times ralsei will try to get the player to focus on susie so that he and kris could have a private conversation; as of chapter 4, we do not know what they're talking about when our focus isn't on them.
In chapter 2: they are both seen going on a swan boat ride through a lake of battery acid in queen's mansion, with the song playing at that point in the game being called "acid tunnel of love" (hence the name of this shrine) with the name of this area even being called "tunnel of love" in the game's files. During this scene, ralsei has a bit of a heart-to-heart with kris; with him telling them about how nervous he was when he first met them and susie, to the point of even hiding his face under his hat. Ralsei then begins listing off a few of both kris and susie's positive qualities, noticably blushing while talking about kris' qualities but not susie's. During this conversation: the player has the option to have kris say they feel the same way when ralsei says he enjoys spending time together with them, and the option to say "it's nice that ralsei is ralsei" when ralsei is talking about kris being kris, and susie being susie; both of which make ralsei very happy. After a battle with rouxls kaard, the two come across a camera at the end of their boat ride and the player has the option to hug ralsei while their photo is being taken.
In chapter 3: during tenna's 'legend of tenna' minigame (specifically the desert board) there is a puzzle where you have to push blocks to unlock part of the map. In this puzzle, one block is purposefully meant to be stuck and causes you to be unable to solve the puzzle. Once the block is stuck, ralsei will help kris by turning into a block himself; to which tenna will play lovey-dovey music and put up a sign saying "pushing buddies."
Later on in this same chapter, when we get to the island board, susie eventually takes over kris' controller and during a puzzle, will tease kris by chasing ralsei's in-game (well....in the IN-UNIVERSE GAME) avatar in circles as them while telling them to stop trying to hug him.
In chapter 4: after the team defeats the roaring titan, ralsei has a breakdown and tries desperately to fake a smile while telling kris everything's okay. In this scene, you're given the option to either tell ralsei to essentially keep bottling up his emotions, or to tell him "it's okay not to smile" which is arguably the most iconic line in this chapter (...besides maybe gerson's "i'm old!") Choosing the ladder option will cause kris to kneel down and hug ralsei by themself for the very first time. I love this scene because it shows without a shadow of a doubt that kris genuinely cares for ralsei even WITHOUT the player's influence; it's not as subtle or subtext-reliant as most other moments between these two so far, and that's honestly really sweet. (Plus it kills the tea theory and pisses on it's grave, which i'll explain later)
Later on in this same scene, ralsei stops kris to compliment them on their piano skills earlier in the chapter; which the holy bible the shipping wiki makes a point to mention that kris played the piano by themself, which could prove that ralsei's point of interest is on kris and not the player.
Optional interactions
During the game's battle tutorial in chapter 1: the player has the ability to hug ralsei instead of the training dummy (which, notably, ralsei modeled after himself, which will be important later), to which ralsei gets flustered and will ask kris if they're trying to ask for a hugging tutorial if hugged multiple times.
When going through the field of hopes and dreams, the player will find their first armor in the game: a white ribbon stored inside a chest. After finding it, ralsei will encourage kris to put it on; if the player instead chooses to put the ribbon on ralsei, ralsei will again, blush and ask kris if he looks pretty.
At any point in the game: if the player makes kris stand really, REALLY close to ralsei for a couple seconds, ralsei would start to blush; which doesn't happen when any other characters get close to him.
During the part where kris and ralsei are supposed to build a thrash machine for susie and lancer; if the player picks most (if not all) the options labeled as "hot," susie will comment on the design confusedly, saying "it looks like you guys wanna kiss?"
If the player chooses to hug the training dummy before leaving the closet dark world for the first time in chapter 2 and then interact with ralsei directly afterward, ralsei will say that they don't need the training dummy anymore and that kris could just hug "the real thing"
If the player gives ralsei the snow ring (noelle's default weapon) he will ask kris is they're trying to propose to him.
During the carnival segment, when queen gives kris her game prize, the player is prompted with the choice to give it to any of the other four characters in that scene. If the player chooses to give the gift to ralsei: he will tell kris that he's so happy that he doesn't even know what to say, that he's never gotten a gift before and wants to win something for kris in return.
When the group gets to queen's mansion, berdly calls ralsei "kris' lackey" before he and susie leave the two alone. When ralsei asks kris if they see him as their lackey afterwards, the player is given the options of yes and no; if you choose yes, ralsei just says he's happy to hear it, but if you choose no, ralsei gets pensive and asks if kris sees him as "more than a lackey".
after defeating the secret boss of chapter 2, spamton NEO, kris will get noticably upset about it (likely shaken up by the whole "puppet" thing and all the talk about souls and control and whatnot) to which ralsei will start trying to comfort kris. If the player hugged ralsei during the acid tunnel scene, ralsei would hug kris and additional dialogue would be said.
When asked what the price of the official ralsei plushie is; if you choose "priceless," it counts as a wrong answer, though ralsei will be flattered. While the shipping wiki counts this as a krisei moment; personally i don't think this is really THAT STRONG of an interpretation since while yes, only the player (and by extension, kris) can lock this choice in, both susie AND ralsei will pick this when the player does. And believe me, i'm a PROFESSIONAL when it comes to overanalysing stupid shit, okay?
During the part of this chapter where ralsei tries to get the player to focus on susie, if you choose "no" ralsei will instead ask if you want to have a conversation, giving you the option to pick between either "no" or "your face." Choosing the ladder will prompt ralsei to ask what kris means by that while blushing. Among the three options you are given, one of them is "cute;" picking that one will cause ralsei to blush even harder and hide his face with his ears in embarrassment, telling kris that he couldn't be anymore happy to hear it.
After obtaining the camera in the island board; if you take a picture of kris with it, ralsei will compliment the photo and call it cute.
To complete the island board, the player MUST unite lanino and elnina at lovers' peak; though if you try to make kris go with ralsei (or, well...their game avatars, anyway) tenna will say you can't use them (direct quote: YOU CAN'T USE KRIS AND RALSEI!!), this type of special dialouge from tenna doesn't appear for any other combination of teammates. While i didn't see this easter egg during my OWN playthrough (and hell, i'm only learning about it as i'm writing this), i do admit that i was EXTREMELY tempted to try it lol.
A little before the group reaches cold place, ralsei suggests kris ask susie how she's doing; however, you are given the choice to ask RALSEI how he's doing instead, which causes him to blush. In this same scene; if you make kris say they aren't taking susie to the festival later that week, you will be given four different choices, one of which being "ralsei or bust," choosing that option will cause ralsei to become flustered. Choosing "noelle" in this scene after the player completes a weird route will cause ralsei to say that it's not a good idea, which the shipping wiki states could be because ralsei wants to protect kris from the player.
At the beginning of chapter 4, when we get to see ralsei's male living space ass bedroom for the first time, ralsei asks kris if they think he should develop his own interests. Here, we are given the option to respond with either "please be yourself" or "of course not;" if the player picks the former, ralsei gets extremely flustered and begins to say he might do something before being interrupted by susie. However, if you pick the ladder, kris will cover their mouth before they can say "not" so that ralsei could only hear "of course."
If the player gives ralsei queen's game prize in chapter 2 (which, if given to ralsei, is a plush of him), it will appear in the corner of the room. Interacting with it will prompt ralsei to tell kris that he's held it every night since they gave it to him.
While helping susie reach a book, ralsei offers to act as a footstool for her (which he calls "magical stoole forme R") which results in her flattening him onto the ground when she steps on him. When this happens, we have the option to have kris to "show some compassion," which causes kris to join ralsei on the ground.
If the player looks through the dark sanctuary's telescope and observes ralsei, he would look directly at the camera and flop his ears to kris.
During the (second) tea party scene of this chapter: when kris closes their eyes, ralsei puts an apple in front of their face for them; if kris eats the core, ralsei will wipe their face with a napkin (admittedly, i missed a lot of ship moments in this chapter, so reading about them now feels really odd, like i'm just reading fanfiction and stating it as canon.)
During the customary "cut to susie" segment of the chapter, ralsei will INSIST they "think about susie" if the player makes kris refuse; getting more and more worried for kris the more you say no.
In the piano room, if you play the legend (a song that is heavily associated with ralsei) on the piano, ralsei will blush and susie will joke about kris trying to serenade ralsei with the song.
How i got into the ship
I've been a fan of this ship ever since i first joined the deltarune fandom back when i was around 12-13 (yes deltarune is that old now,) i didn't really pick up on any romantic undertones in kris and ralsei's relationship when i first watched jacksepticeye's let's play of the game since y'know....jack most likely doesn't care for shipping and thus just made his own choices so i didn't really see a lot of the "ship moments" until i saw the thrash machine dialogue in a youtube thumbnail and me, being a hormonal lil middle schooler at the time, just...INSTANTLY started fangirling because of how cute it was and became a krisei shipper right then and there!! (Albeit my hormones did kinda make me hate noelle with a BURNING passion at first just because i hated how similar her dynamic with susie was to alphys and undyne in undertale, which was honestly kinda stupid of me looking back...toby fox just has a ship dynamic he likes and that's fine.) I remember someone even invited me to a krisei-themed chatroom on amino and that was probably the closest thing i had to friends at the time, it felt really nice being able to talk to like-minded people like i did then (i even got one of them to laugh at a joke i made which made me feel very proud :3)
I even believed a very small hoax going around that amino until i was about 15, which stated that there was apparently an EXTREMELY rare item in the nintendo switch version of deltarune called a "rainbow fruit" that, when given to ralsei, made him gay. There were even fake screenshots going around, showing a conversation with the kris master saying something like "kris will give you a kiss" and ralsei saying "wait, kris is gay too? I mean..." with the narrator saying "he seems happy" afterwards. Looking back now, this is OBVIOUSLY fake; i highly doubt toby fox would implement something like that in his game. Plus, i kinda get the vibes from the dialogue that whoever made the hoax was misgendering kris. I mean, obviously nonbinary people CAN identify as gay; but considering the fact that ralsei is male, and this hoax states that this dialogue only shows up when he's given the special "fruit that makes you gay," it just kinda leaves a bad taste in my mouth, y'know?
In the time between then and making this shrine now, i've made my own fankid OC for the ship by the name of sprite dreemurr (hence the sprite blinkie on the side) as well as another OC named crumpet who would be sprite's best friend, but eventually be retconned into her adopted younger brother. I had the idea to create sprite YEARS before i even made a solid design for her, as i originally had plans on selling her as an adoptable on deltarune amino as part of a series of deltarune ship adopts i had planned (although i didn't go through with that idea...) her name was originally "baby carrot" as i felt that was something kris would name their child as a joke, but i thought about for a bit and realized ralsei would probably shoot that idea down...so i named her "sprite" instead, after the soda, which is a more subtle joke name as the word "sprite" can also refer to the little fairy creatures in folklore (spryte the fairy from the 1989 legend of zelda cartoon also had some influence). That said: her design is also inspired by the title character of the anime "magical princess minky momo" as i was watching this video by kenny lauderdale while first designing sprite and i liked momo's design.
That said, if you looked at sprite: you'd notice that she doesn't really look like she belongs in the deltarune universe, as she has a gradient in her hair and none of the characters in canon have gradients in their designs. Which i mean....in my defense: most undertale OCs i see are just sans wearing a different outfit, so....
Okay, in all serious: yes, i know this design isn't the best in terms of fitting in. And because of that realization: i actually started adding colored gradients to all the boss monsters' ears whenever i draw fanart so that she didn't look TOO out of place.
Debunking misconceptions about the ship
Like i said at the beginning, krisei is somewhat of a controversial ship in the deltarune fandom. And while i don't really engage in shipping discourse in any fandom (i prefer to avoid useless drama like that like the plague) in this context: it feels almost unavoidable (to me at least, i have anxiety so it could probably not be as bad as my brain makes it out to be) because of how often i see krisei shippers being treated as the butt of a joke, almost everytime i look through the comments of a krisei post there's always at least ONE person saying something really passive aggressive (ie. "I hate this ship but this is nice art") or bringing up some dumb theory or misconception. As such, i will debunk all of the more widespread ones because i'm tired of seeing them.
"The tea theory proves that kris doesn't like ralsei!!"
For those who don't know what the tea theory is (AKA if you're more fortunate than me) basically in chapter 2: there's a vendor selling "choose your OWN flavor" tea, which is literally tea that's flavored like your teammates and each flavor heals each teammate differently based on what their relationship is with that character. Considering the fact that the ralsei tea heals kris 60% fans believe that kris doesn't like ralsei, and as such, apparently that means you're not allowed to ship them. This can be easily debunked when you take into consideration that the noelle tea heals ralsei 50% (and vice versa) and as far as i know, ralsei and noelle don't hate each other or anything (hell, i've actually seen people ship THEM together!!) They just met THAT DAY so they obviously wouldn't know each other that well, so why assume that KRIS and ralsei's relationship is that different? It doesn't prove anything!! Besides, while the tea DOES go bad in the player's inventory after chapter 2 and thus this can't be accessed in normal gameplay, in the game's files: it is shown that the ralsei tea heals kris to 100hp after you pick the "it's okay not to smile" dialouge option at the end of chapter 4, so this whole theory is complete bullshit.
"Ralsei is asriel!! Shipping them together is supporting incest!!!"
...honestly, there's too many flaws in the "ralsei is asriel theory" to list here so i'm gonna link this video by kooki914 as he debunks it better than i ever could. That said: if you're not gonna watch it, here's the TLDR he provides in the description:
"Ralsei and asriel are different characters when examined further than just their surface level traits. The traits they DO have in common are often shared with other characters (namely, other boss monsters), just like with each other, and it's very possible that ralsei's name being an anagram of asriel's is just an aesthetic choice (just like kris = chara + frisk, suzy and susie, undertale and deltarune, and so on, shuffling of letters and words just seems to be a general theme). Ralsei is much more resilient than asriel is, and he has a much more grounded idea of morality and his duty, and seems unshaken by the threats people throw his way while asriel is a canonical crybaby. Asriel is in college during deltarune, and there's nothing to explain why or how he would be able to fit into the prophecy of a "prince from the dark", when in deltarune, he is neither a prince or a darkner."
"Kris canonically doesn't like being controlled by the player!! You're forcing a relationship onto kris!!!"
Kris is a fictional character; they are not real, their feelings are not real and all the meta shit about the game being it's own world inside your computer is not real either. Not to mention that as of right now: while we DON'T REALLY KNOW what kris' true feelings are besides their dislike of being controlled and we don't know for sure if kris likes when we make them show affection to ralsei: kris IS shown a couple times in chapter 4 to actually care for him. Besides, i never see anyone say this for any other kris ships; not even the popular ones like krusie or krerdly, even though it applies to ALL of them. Either ALL kris ships are okay, or NONE of them are okay; you can't just cherrypick to match your own narrative. Plus, pretty much every ship on the planet (besides canon ones) is just people making two (or more) characters get together even though they probably wouldn't!! If for example: someone in the doki doki literature club fandom shipped monika and sayori together, would you accuse them of forcing stuff onto monika because she's canonically a sentient AI who wants the player to herself? No!! Because both characters are FICTIONAL!!! Someone in real life WROTE monika to be aware she's in a game!! Someone WROTE her to be jealous of the other girls!! This is the same thing with kris!! Both characters are just fictional characters created by someone to tell a story.
"Krisei shippers just wanna fuck ralsei and are just using kris as a self insert!!!"
.....do i even need to debunk this one? No, that's obviously not the case (ESPECIALLY considering both characters are MINORS!!!) and we don't claim the people that DO, either. If you seriously think that, that honestly says more about you than us. I understand not liking a ship because of a few bad eggs in the community (that's part of the reason why i personally don't like charisk) if you had a run-in with someone who ACTUALLY did that and that ruined the ship for you, that's completely valid and i'm sorry that happened, but that doesn't mean you get to generalize ALL of us and harrass us over it.
All in all, i feel like most krisei hate (and just ralsei hate in general) is rooted in the fact that ralsei isn't a stereotypically masculine character (with a lot of people in the fandom even theorizing that he may be transfem), and many people are unable to see a guy being a little feminine without immediantly assuming it's a fetish. While many self-identified femboys in real life DO express this side of themself in lewd ways, most of them do not and it is EXTREMELY harmful to assume as such....especially considering the state of the US right now.
My personal headcanons
In all honesty, i don't know how to smoothly transition to a less serious topic after that big ol' bomb so let's just jump into it.
Ngl, i've recently started headcanoning that kris is a bit of a tsundere for ralsei JUST to spite people who hate the ship for the reasons above lol. You know how in fanfiction and stuff when a character realizes they're in love and instead of reacting normally, they just go "GOD FUCKING DAMMIT, WHY THEM???" That's how i feel like kris would react to it. Sure, i DEFINITELY feel like they probably wouldn't be that big on having to hug ralsei, but that's just because i can't imagine them being much of a touchy-feely person in general. Unless they're REALLY close, i feel like if someone touched kris, they'd probably get confused and start silently freaking out; kinda giving the same vibes as the vocaloid song "the highschool girl next to me."
Obviously, i already explained how ralsei is canonically into kris, so i don't need to explain HIS side of the ship; though with kris, i feel like it'd be a "one fell first, the other fell harder" type of situation. Kris KNOWS ralsei likes them, but they don't really understand what it TRULY means to love someone if that makes sense; they probably WOULD feel at least a LITTLE bit of affection at first, but they wouldn't really KNOW that it's love until a little later on. It'd be a dull feeling at first, but would become overwhelmingly strong once the realization kicks in. I feel like whoever confesses first depends on whether or not the player decides to intervene, i can totally imagine a confession scene in like, a future chapter or whatever where kris and ralsei are alone together and we're prompted with the option to confess or not, but ralsei would just confess anyway if we choose no lol.
Once they actually become an ITEM, i DEFINITELY feel like ralsei would be the more affectionate of the two. From what i've seen in fanart and whatnot, many other shippers usually tend to portray kris as a massive flirt who's constantly hitting on ralsei and quite honestly, as cute as a lot of that fanart is, i don't really see kris as that kind of person. Sure, i can definitely see kris as a bit charismatic (i feel like that actually kinda shows in-game through their body language), but not a full-on rizzler, y'know?
Generally, given kris' introverted nature, i feel like they'd rarely show any PDA (Public Display of Affection) but whenever they did, they'd be just....the MOST loving person EVER; i'm imagining them holding ralsei in their arms and like, petting him and crap and not wanting to let go of him (i feel like they'd be at least a LITTLE touch-starved).
Considering the fact that ralsei is one of kris' VERY few friends, i think kris would HIGHLY value him and not want to leave his side; they're not as "anxiety-ridden" (for lack of a better term) as ralsei, but i definitely feel like they have SOME abandonment issues, y'know?
Resources
Krisei's article on the shipping wiki - This is where i did a lot of my research for the canon section so i feel it's only right that i should give a citation (other sources include the deltarune wiki and my beautiful mind)