#i always had the same type of glorification problem w/ o and i was uncomfortable by her for years

[lingeringscars]

hope is not as in control of her ( physical ) aggression as she likes to believe she is. she tends to repress most of her emotions, filtering them into anger. she then takes her anger out on either the nearest bad guy, a punching bag, and sometimes other people at the salvatore school. on more than one occasion, her repressed emotions have come out in physical aggression, beyond her control. however, there are also moments where she is in complete control and still chooses this path. on more than one occasion, she has asked when she can start punching things, usually as a way of venting her own anger. 

in the musical ep, it’s really important to note that she was angry with landon. she took one look at him and then threw a dodgeball as hard as she could, with all of her super strength at jed, someone who could handle the impact unlike landon. this is a form of displaced aggression, and also a type of physical abuse. her main target wasn’t jed but landon and that’s not okay? i don’t think hope necessarily realizes this though. jed can take the hit, and she doesn’t know any other way to process or manage her grief or anger. it consumes her, and she feels like sparring, training, hitting is the only form of release. while there isn’t anything inherently wrong with this, as long as she’s in a controlled environment, but when other people are involved it can end in unintentional damage (ie: when her grief over her father is bottled up and she ends up accidentally knocking alaric & landon across the room). 

hope has a lot of bottled up trauma & grief that she needs to process and work through; otherwise it leads to negative reactions to stimuli that can further hurt herself and others. she frequently makes decisions for other people in an attempt to have control ( and the school also rests the weight of protection on her shoulders !! it feels like she’s the only one that can do anything because the school has this mindset that hope will always save the day and is their savior. so when hope fails or almost does or doesn’t show up, people either don’t know what to do or hold it against her. none of that is fair or okay either !! ). hope’s fear of losing people, though, does sometimes come out either in isolating herself and pulling away from the people that care, or making decisions for them and taking away their own autonomy ( she does this frequently to landon in an attempt to protect him as she sees fit ). hope is so afraid of losing people and has the weight of being the hero on her, that she oversteps and alienates the people she is closest to.