COYLE'S BF

I've got to say 30s/40s Blackwell was not at all what I was expecting. I knew their industry was built mostly around oil and agriculture, and I hadn't really given much thought to what people did for fun outside of going to the movies or picnicking in the park. I suppose in my ignorance, I was expecting... well, rural stereotypes. After all, that's what the game keeps trying to have us believe about Coyle.

But guys. Blackwell had speedboats. And multiple nearby water parks. That's just wild to me.

I'm not going to post a bunch of pictures, because I want people to go and watch the video for themselves, but here are some things that stood out as important

Blackwell PD and fire department still share the same building in the present day, though city hall has moved to premises on the opposite side of the road. I don't want to post a bunch of Google Maps screenshots, but I wholeheartedly recommend taking a virtual wander around the buildings exterior to get a feel for the place

So just looking at those uniforms shows that Coyle would not have been wearing the black, military inspired police uniform we see him wearing in his comic appearances. Even in the 30s/40s they'd moved onto wearing shirts and ties.

This image depicts the founding lineup of the Blackwell Police Department in 1923, and as you can see, even then, they weren't wearing military-inspired uniforms. I haven't been able to find anything similar to what Coyle wears throughout the BPD's history. But what is cool to note is that they've always had a motorcycle, so that's fun. Nothing relevant there, I just thought I'd mention it because I've seen people draw Coyle as a motorcycle cop, and it's completely plausible that he was!

One thing that sticks out to me, is how tiny the BPD force is? In the 1930s census, 9,521 people were living in Blackwell, but fewer than 10 police officers by the look of it. Coyle must feel downright spoiled in his trial environments, having such a big precinct and so many staff on hand, useless as they are, standing around like a bunch of mannequins.

Though truth be told, I would have expected Coyle to be freaking out at the amount of female police officer mannequins in his trials. I've no idea when women were first initiated into the BPD, I can't find any information on it, but the first women to join the Oklahoma City police force did so in August 1955. Coyle was scooped up by Murkoff post-February 1956, so he would know about "lady policemen", but I can't for one second imagine him approving of the concept.

Comic Coyle and the New Mexico State Police uniform that they slapped onto him for reference.

The part where Coyle breaks the mold is that he seems to recognize he was mistreated. In real life, it’s common for these men to spend their whole lives still loyal to their mothers, despite many of them growing up to be misogynists. Coyle’s a misogynist, yeah, and his mother has a place in the internal mechanisms of his misogyny. But he’s not loyal to her. He appears to cite her as an example of unfit female authority when reminded of her by Gooseberry: “careful about letting a woman control your life. Next thing you know it’s perversion and despair, chaos.” Coyle associates lightning with power, and in another of his voice lines, he accuses his mother of “twisting [his] vittles” and forcing him to get in the bathtub even though he could supposedly be electrocuted to death in there. “Bitch never was right in the head,” he says afterwards.

So Coyle’s mother exposed him to lightning - to power, to violent unwanted sexuality - but Coyle thinks this is a sign that she was insane. She hurt him because she had access to authority she couldn’t be trusted with. Not that no one deserves that level of control, in his mind. Coyle’s father was a soldier just like him, you might remember, a position which is infamous for providing opportunities both to receive and to commit sexual violence. His father also watched the death throes of an electrocuted cow in their front yard, as Coyle explained in another voice line, calling it “justice.”