i won’t go into super many details, but i’ll still try to explain it as good as i can!!
hilda doesn’t see the point in making human friends her own age, to the point where she’s strongly against it. you could argue that it’s just because she’s lived away from society her whole life, but that’s where the autistic-CODED part comes in!
it’s also interesting how, despite her fear of befriending other kids, she’s great at befriending other creatures. this is probably because of the lack of verbal communication. to hilda, animals and monsters are a lot simpler than human people, easier to identify with (and hey, they’re clearly her special interest!). even when she knew how dangerous the troll was, she was able to understand it and recognize the problem, and helped it without hesitation. this is backed up by this scene:
at this point in the story, hilda’s mom is still worried about hilda’s fascination with monsters. she mentions her ability to befriend them, but compares it to befriending kids because she doesn’t understand hilda’s struggle. hilda is obviously torn up by this.
when hilda manages to talk to some kids in town, they invite her to prank their neighbors with them. the other kids think it’s funny, but hilda doesn’t get it, and she feels awkwardly left out of the group.
they get hilda to try it, but she’s still confused about what they’re doing and WHY they’re doing it, so she messes it up. and then THIS happens:
she panics and proceeds to do something nice instead, though she’s anxious about messing up again. but when the old woman genuinely thanks her for the compliment, hilda is relieved and smiles back, and gives the other kids a thumbs up as if that was the plan all along. she knows that’s probably not what she was supposed to do, but since everything went well, she still accepts it as a victory. a positive outcome was all that mattered to her.
once again, hilda completely misses the point of the game. and even when she’s told what to do, she misunderstands and kicks the can way too hard. and she’s embarrassed.
OTHER THINGS I DIDN’T MENTION BECAUSE THIS POST GOT TOO LONG DAMN:
Because they often give the villain the lines that are socially subversive but true, in order to get them past the censors.
Which is incidentally what makes villains often far more relatable than heroes.
I’m reminded of something Tim Curry said on voicing villains. “The fact is though, that bad guys are often much better written than the good guys, and they’re kind of irresistible because they’re so much fun!”
