I’ve been gushing for a few days now about some of the smaller details added to Hyrule in the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake, like this new dialogue in Castle Town and new clarity on the fate of the Zora. But last night I ran into another deeply silly addition that I just have to tell you about. It’s controversy! Scandal! Confusion?
What the heck is going on with Honey and Darling?
If you don’t know who Honey and Darling are, you’ve definitely seen them before. They’re the perpetually dancing couple who appear in the center square of Hyrule Castle Town, and then move to the hilltop behind the windmill in Kakariko Village in the adult era. In the original Ocarina of Time, they are unnamed, but Majora’s Mask canonized their alternate selves as Honey and Darling. Ocarina of Time has them using those same nicknames for one another, so in the interest of clarity, I’m going to refer to them here, too, as Honey (the woman) and Darling (the man).
Honey and Darling are iconic and insufferable. In the original game, they sit there and gush over how in love they are with one another, with Honey comparing Darling to the handsome King of Hyrule and Darling saying Honey is more beautiful than Princess Zelda. They continue spinning on and on into the night, day after day. In Kakariko, they’re still spinning, offering Link no useful information when he speaks to them but instead calling him “annoying” and accusing him of “violating” their “personal space.” If you approach them wearing one of the game’s many masks, they still express nothing more interesting than irritation with you for daring to exist. Rude! I just wanted to chat!
From all that, you can interpret little more than that Honey and Darling are obsessively in love with one another, get some sort of kick out of publicly displaying that love, and are still together in spite of their mutual insufferability (or perhaps because of it) seven years later. Fine, unremarkable.
In the remake, though! This pair is back, seemingly the same as ever, albeit with some more dialogue that has each of them gushing over their respective partner. Nothing to see here, right? Wrong. Put on that Mask of Truth!
The Mask of Truth is an item received from the Happy Mask Salesman sidequests that, when donned, allows you to read the minds of most characters. Unlike in the original, here you can wear masks as both child and adult Link, which gives you double the opportunities to see what’s really going on in people’s heads. The Mask of Truth dialogue adds a lot of humor and context to many of the game’s interactions, but in the case of Honey and Darling, it has utterly baffled me. Get a load of this:
That’s Darling speaking! What! What the hell, man?! You don’t even know this woman’s name and you’ve been spinning around this square declaring your love for her for how long? How many other women are you seeing? Sheesh! When paired with Honey’s dialogue posted above (“If he ever hurts me, I’ll never forgive him…”), this suggests something a little ominous for the future of their relationship, right?
So let’s check in on them in Kakariko Village, seven years in the future. Still dancing, still obsessing over one another. Except…
Excuse me?! That’s Honey speaking this time! The younger twin of whom?! As far as I’m aware, Honey having a twin has never once come up. Unless…okay, I’m putting it together here. Darling is dating a pair of twin sisters. He knows they’re twins, but can’t keep their names straight. Honey (and Honey 2, I guess) are also aware of this arrangement and don’t care, but the younger of the two seems a bit dismayed that Darling can’t tell them apart.
I’ve been trying to do reporter work all day, looking around both towns for a double of Honey hiding somewhere, but I’ve come up empty. I’ve tried Mask of Truthing everyone in the vicinity to see if anyone knows anything about what’s happening here and will comment on it, but it’s no good. I am left with only theories as to what sort of bizarre relationship is going on between these two, maybe three, people. You might say, “Reb, this is none of your business!” To that I say, Honey and Honey and Darling made it my business when they started dramatically parading their romance in the town square. For all of their sakes, however many of them there are, I hope every member of this relationship is clued in as to the presence of every other person within it. Otherwise, I’m predicting some serious scandal come Majora’s Mask time.
