That's a very good question and the short answer is "the horror of the situation is that nobody knows 100%" :')))
But longer answer: So Peter's grandmother (secretly the head of a cult worshiping Paimon) needed a male host to put Paimon into, but Peter's mom wouldn't let her touch Peter when he was born. Instead, the mom "gave" her second child to Grandma. The poor little baby was vulnerable enough that Paimon could be put into her pretty easily and she could be used as a placeholder for him until Peter could be prepped & groomed to host him later on.... So essentially, Charlie unknowingly grew up from infancy with a demon inside of her. When the Paimon-transfer into Peter was finally complete, he did display some Charlie mannerisms as well, so there's a lot of identities jumbled up in here lmao... Whether it's like a "copy" of her personality inside of Paimon or if she has actually has a true separate soul in there, nobody really knows!
I play it by keeping a ton of ambiguity, which makes for so much identity and gender confusion fuckery. But there's definitely a part of Paimon who grew up for thirteen years inside of a little human girl and didn't seem to know what he really was, since being in the wrong host body (aka a female one) kept him really fucked up and numbed down. Now that he's in Peter, he's able to start remembering his True Self again (hella-powerful ancient demon king), so it's this clash of identities. He was also forced into other hosts way before Charlie, notably when Grandma tried to use her own teenage son (Peter's uncle) to host him, and the poor kid... killed himself before the ritual could be completed, so Paimon has remnants of those other botched possession attempts / past hosts in him, too. This family is fucked up y'all :')
Sorry for all the tl;dr, Hereditary is Complicatedβ’, but yeah! I'm just as canonblind to TLT so I'm interested to potentially explore more common themes and stuff!! (pls feel free to ramble as much about TLT as you ever want to, it sounds really fascinating and I love hearing about other canons )
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But longer answer: So Peter's grandmother (secretly the head of a cult worshiping Paimon) needed a male host to put Paimon into, but Peter's mom wouldn't let her touch Peter when he was born. Instead, the mom "gave" her second child to Grandma. The poor little baby was vulnerable enough that Paimon could be put into her pretty easily and she could be used as a placeholder for him until Peter could be prepped & groomed to host him later on.... So essentially, Charlie unknowingly grew up from infancy with a demon inside of her. When the Paimon-transfer into Peter was finally complete, he did display some Charlie mannerisms as well, so there's a lot of identities jumbled up in here lmao... Whether it's like a "copy" of her personality inside of Paimon or if she has actually has a true separate soul in there, nobody really knows!
I play it by keeping a ton of ambiguity, which makes for so much identity and gender confusion fuckery. But there's definitely a part of Paimon who grew up for thirteen years inside of a little human girl and didn't seem to know what he really was, since being in the wrong host body (aka a female one) kept him really fucked up and numbed down. Now that he's in Peter, he's able to start remembering his True Self again (hella-powerful ancient demon king), so it's this clash of identities. He was also forced into other hosts way before Charlie, notably when Grandma tried to use her own teenage son (Peter's uncle) to host him, and the poor kid... killed himself before the ritual could be completed, so Paimon has remnants of those other botched possession attempts / past hosts in him, too. This family is fucked up y'all :')
Sorry for all the tl;dr, Hereditary is Complicatedβ’, but yeah! I'm just as canonblind to TLT so I'm interested to potentially explore more common themes and stuff!! (pls feel free to ramble as much about TLT as you ever want to, it sounds really fascinating and I love hearing about other canons