The Expert Book Smuggler

If you’ve read my previous installment of The Problem With Horror, you’ll know that I covered Otis Bateman and Stephen Cooper sharing women’s nude photos without permission. Before we dive into the Troy Poppler Situation, I’ve got an update on Bateman.

In July 2025, a post was shared on the r/extremehorrorlit subreddit titled, ‘Travis [Davis] aka Otis Bateman’ alongside a screenshot of an alledged indictment for both receipt and possession of child pornography. According to the user who shared the indictment, Bateman’s coworker is said to have outed him to the horror community after Bateman was arrested outside of his job. The user goes on to say that the indictment was confirmed by fellow authors who were friends with Bateman.

The alleged arrest was not a surprise for many people as Bateman is known for referencing notorious child sex offender Peter Scully in his books. Scully is currently serving a 100-year sentence in the Philippines for human trafficking, five counts of rape, and one count of murder. Scully also produced and distributed CSAM on the dark web.

Unlike previous situations within the horror community, Bateman was widely condemned after the news broke with only mild pushback requesting readers ‘separate the art from the artist’.

I’ve seen some stuff about separating the art from the artist when it comes to Otis Bateman. That you would’ve never known he was a monster if this news hadn’t come to light.

Y’all, we went over this a fucking year ago. He’s a top tier piece of human filth. Last year it was degrading women, sharing their nudes without consent, and sharing questionable media. Now it’s come to light that he’s a literal fucking pedophile and there are people still trying to [separate the] art from the artist.

[…]

Fuck Otis, AKA Travis Richard Davis. He’s a monster and everything [he’s] ever produced should be condemned along with him. This shouldn’t even be a remotely hot take. Fingers crossed he gets the maximum sentence and is subjected to nothing but torment for the rest of his miserable life.

-Rob Nelson

Unfortunately, Bateman wouldn’t be the last author facing controversy for CSAM. This brings us to splatterpunk author, Troy Poppler.

Troy Poppler and AI generated CSAM

On November 4^th, 2025 @jojobean_reads posted a Thread exposing author Troy Poppler for utilizing AI generated images of CSA (child sexual assault) to promote his book Saint Mick. Poppler, a U.S. Army Veteran, had created multiple images of the 10-year-old main character of his book who is terrorized by ‘Santa’. These ‘promotional’ images were shared on his various social media accounts and in Facebook groups where @jojobean_reads says some users called her ‘sensitive’ for calling him out for the images.

Yesterday I discovered an extreme horror author who thought it was a great idea to create Al generated images of CSA to ‘promote’ his book. That it was totally fine because its a ‘work of fiction’ and I am just too sensitive. The amount of people telling me that I am the one in the wrong for calling him out and reporting him, is actually insane. Just because it ‘wasn’t real’ doesn’t make it any less fked up!

These users argued that the book and the art were ‘just fiction’ however AI utilizes real images of child victims to create these ‘fictional’ images. According to enoughabuse.org, these images pose a real danger to children for the following reasons:

• Perpetrators can now generate, alter or collage depictions of children that are indistinguishable from depictions of real children.
• They can use parts of images of real children to create a composite image that is unidentifiable as a particular child, and in a way that prevents even an expert from concluding that parts of images of real children were used.
• They disguise pictures of real children being abused by making the image look computer-generated.
• Sexually explicit depictions involving children—even if no physical abuse occurs during their creation—has significant psychological and long-term impacts on the children depicted.
• Artificially-generated or computer-edited CSAM further re-victimizes actual child victims, as their images are collected from the Internet and studied by artificial intelligence tools to create new images.
• Child predators can also use artificially-generated or computer-edited CSAM to extort minors and their families for financial gain.

As previously mentioned in this series, it isn’t uncommon for fans of taboo genres to close ranks when authors are accused of perpetuating harm. Genres such as splatterpunk, extreme horror, and dark romance often receive significant criticism for the subjects the cover- which makes it even more important that real life harm is handled appropriately by these communities.

You cannot defend your genre by standing behind authors who bring the horror off the page and into real life. It is no longer fiction when real people are involved and there is no denying that real child victims were involved in the creation of these AI images per enoughabuse.org. Just because your genre explores the depths of depravity doesn’t mean there are simply no boundaries involved.

While some Threads users informed the community that the chapter headers shared in a Facebook group were ‘worse’ than those used to promote the book, the promotional images were still incredibly disturbing. AI images included in the ads included:

• Polaroids of the clothed child screaming while laying down.
• Blood splattered polaroid pictures with close up images of the child screaming with black marker x marks over her face and arrows pointing to her mouth.
• An image of the clothed child on her hands and knees with Santa’s naked legs behind her.
• An image of the child smoking while covered in blood.
• A naked Santa with a large red bow covering his genitals.

This isn’t to say that all extreme horror authors or readers support these things, but it’s very clear that some members of the community simply use the genre as a cover. With Bateman we see how his alleged real-life crimes were shared in his books and defended by readers. With Matt Shaw and Jay Sizemore, we saw how their misogyny seeped into their books and were used as weapons against real women. And now with Poppler, we see that he apparently finds no issue with these images- even when informed that AI uses real CSAM to make these materials.

As Wrath James White points out in his blog post ‘CSA In Extreme Horror: And Why You Should Not Support That Shit’, there is a fine line between pushing the boundaries and authoring books that may titillate pedophiles. White further points out that the demand for these types of books is concerning and that the only difference in this situation is that the author went so far as to create these images.

For the past two or three years I have seen books that feature CSA as the main plot point become hot sellers. This isn’t solely a problem with authors of Extreme Horror. This is a problem with the readership. What type of readers do we want to attract? I have seen readers openly post in Facebook Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror groups looking for recomendations of books with CSA. Worse yet is no one batted an eye. Other readers were more than happy to provide recomendations. My god, what have we become?

Wrath James White

Poppler responded to the call out in the comment section stating that the book was ‘honoring’ his recently deceased father (HOW!?), but posted the following to his personal Facebook page:

“Let me make something clear. DO NOT come on my page and spew your motherfucking [bullshit] about how vile my shit is. And definitely do not accuse me of manufacturing child porn for my jollys. The character this [bitch] is all bent out of shape about is Cindy Lou, from my upcoming Saint Mick story. we all fucking know he’s a pedophile [piece of shit]. And he’s a fictional motherfucker. You don’t like my work, [get the fuck off] motherfuckin page. To top it off she reported it and got me restricted. Woohoo. The last two weeks have sucked. Now this. Fuck off to all my haters. Get a fucking life.”

The author would go on to repeatedly utilize the deaths of multiple family members to deflect from the criticism. At one point, his Facebook account was reported and subsequently banned for 180 days, which the author addressed on TikTok.

“I’M NOW BANNED ON FB AND IG FOR 180 DAYS.! I’m asking ALL my fans and followers to [please] rally around me since one triggered Karen managed to get me banned on Facebook and Instagram over a promotional pic designed for my upcoming extreme holiday horror masterpiece, “Saint Mick.” I REALLY NEED YOU GUYS, SO PLEASE HELP PROMOTE MY NAME AND ALL MY WORKS.”

When looking through the screenshots in the slideshow above, you will see Troy call @jojobean_reads a ‘bitch’ and a ‘bish’ in addition to a ‘triggered Karen’. This is very telling that Troy would use misogynistic language while defending himself in what I perceive to be an angry, aggressive manner. After all, we’ve been talking for years about the issue of misogyny in horror spaces…

When I looked into what others had to say about Troy, I came upon this post from Crystal Cook informing others that Troy held ‘auditions’ to have a woman attend conventions with him as ‘eye candy’. It appears that Troy is yet another man in the horror space who views women as objects rather than actual people.

I typically stay out of shit, but. Troy Poppler has always been a douche.

Months ago, he held “auditions” to have a chick who looked like his main character in his whatever dumbass books he was writing. (I’ve had the privilege of never reading any of that crap) He found a chick, said that she would attend conventions with him, to pretty much be “eye candy” Then he photo shopped her pics to change her hair color and shit. Yeah dude, Harley Quinn is super original.

The fact that he went from that to whatever he thought was a good idea now, leads me to believe that, on top of him being a total pos, that it’s also Al written.

Troy has been not only reported to the police, but to the FBI as well. Per Troy’s comment sections, he was visited by the police who he claim ‘felt sorry’ for him. However, one of the users who reported him has clarified that his case is being handled by Minnesota Cyber Crimes.

However, Troy has followed up stating that he has been ‘cleared of any wrongdoing’ and will be filing defamation suits against at least four people. Personally, I find this difficult to believe considering he has somehow managed to meet with police, be cleared of any wrongdoing, acquire ‘excellent representation’, and begin planning a move in the matter of a single day.

Regardless, it’s clear that Poppler hasn’t even attempted to consider where he went wrong. Instead, his critics are ‘bitches’ and ‘Karens’ for caring about the safety of children. Yet another man who must be ousted from the community!