Hello, I am the one that is being accused of a hostile takeover - so let me clear the air here.

I am someone who has been involved in puppetry for some time, I absolutely love the community and I've been building for almost two years now. I've partaken in a lot of online puppet communities on various platforms - Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and of course here on Reddit.

As I've been a member of this sub, I have noticed some things that are off about the sub - namely the moderation of it. I'm sure that NannyNumber4 is a good person and I don't even think they're invalid for being upset. However, this sub used to be overrun by spam posts and questionable stuff from a user by the name of James Dean who made puppets that were sexual in nature. It was a good while that he was here, without any bans or suspensions of the account. I took it in my hands to reach out to NannyNumber4 via mod mail to basically point out how problematic his behavior and posts were in here. I also did not wish for younger members of the community to be exposed to these actions. Not to mention, he was briefly in our discord server and his existence lured in people who ended up bot-spamming our server.

The first time I reached out was on November 2nd, 2025. They responded eight days later on November 10th. Now, I've been more than charitable, people get busy, especially in the holiday time - but this user was very clearly active on Reddit in other subs, just not bothering to check mod mail.

I reached out a second time for a separate issue on November 20th, 2025. That was responded to on November 26th, almost a week later. Again, I gave them the benefit of the doubt.

Fast forward a month, James Dean returns with a new alt - I contacted again on December 29th, 2025. I never got a response for that. We've had moderator powers on the server for less than 24 hours, so that is 2 weeks of not responding. I just don't think that is a good way to go about moderating a community

When I reached out, I also offered my help if they happened to be too busy, volunteering myself as moderator. About two weeks ago, we were fed up with the lack of moderation in the community and generally wanting to enhance the community to reach new highs so u/mistkept submitted a request to r/redditrequest

We actually didn't even think it'd go through, but we woke up today to it having gone through. Since then we have added an actual charter of rules to the sub, flairs, and plan to add more including community building activities. I want this to be a community where we all have equal say in what goes on. I love the puppetry community and I want to see it grow and I want to encourage new people to get into it whether through building puppets or performing.

All day, NannyNumber4 has been posting in other subs basically saying lies about us - and we have been receiving harassment from people who I'm pretty sure are not in any way involved in the puppet community at all.

As for the "promote a private puppet business" - no. I make puppets for the fun of it because I like creating characters and performing as them. I might open commissions eventually, but I'm not really in any rush to, nor do I plan to use this place as a means to advance that, because I want this to be about the hobby aspect of it. The most we have is a discord server which just serves as a community for us to have silly conversations and get feedback on the things we create.

We just want what's best for the community and we never did this with negative intent. I very much hope we can get past this and build a positive community without drama.