#mlfl

[lifeisatrial]

Double chapter update for My Least Favourite Life aka the Noel-Weller Divorce Fic. (Yes, the chapter count went up AGAIN, but this time it's only because I included a cute standalone bonus chapter.)

[lifeisatrial]

In My Least Favourite Life, does Liam know/find out that Weller wrote You Do Something To Me about Noel?? How much does he care? Love and obsessed with all versions of your girl Noel ugh she’s just so full of complications and huge feelings LOVEEEE

Amazing question, anon, and thank you letting me ramble on about world-building that will not make it into a chapter but which I have thought deeply about. Liam knows, but it's one of those things that he wouldn't need to be told to know. Literally all it would take to find out is to stand side stage with Noel during a Paul Weller gig, which he did once and promptly walked out after that song. (Pause to note the main difference in MLFL with YLAMDD is that Noel and Weller are publicly, if lowkey, dating. Weller's separated and in the midst of getting a divorce, and she's not cheating on anyone technically, so there's no need to sneak around. And it does generate some positive PR at the start. Real world Liam/Patsy parallels without the overt exhibitionism, hello.) Naturally, Liam hates it. He thinks the song is overrated and the lyrics reinforce his mental picture of Weller as someone fundamentally selfish and self-centred. Liam writes Songbird as a response to You Do Something To Me. If you compare the lyrics in that light, you'll see where Liam's coming from. The Weller lyrics focus on the speaker's experience of unrequited love and what it does to him, whereas the lyrics of Songbird are about giving something back to someone you love (gonna write a song so she can see / give her all the love she gives to me). (Of course the contexts are different and Weller is perfectly capable of writing songs for others. The man wrote Wild Wood and As You Lean Into The Light, amongst many others. But Liam's not going to be fair or rational about this.) Noel unironically thinks Songbird is a better song. Personally, I agree—and I don't even like Songbird that much! (*gunshot*) I think we can say what we like about better musicianship, complex arrangements, and higher quality production, but there's something about the pure-hearted emotion channelled through sweet vulnerability in Liam's songwriting that makes everything else irrelevant. (Morrissey might be one of the greatest lyricists of his generation, but if he had written the lines 'soul love, come into my world, it's all for you, everything I do', I firmly believe Johnny Marr would have immediately reformed The Smiths.)

[lifeisatrial]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Noeleen Gallagher marries Paul Weller in 1996. It’s a mistake. (Chapter 1 of 5).

She knows it’s a mistake the morning after. She’d wonder how she let herself get into these situations with him, but she already knows. It’s just the way it is: Insistent, passionate, overwhelming. It’s hard not to get swept up by him.

[lifeisatrial]

On the first weekend of the new year, I come bearing double fic chapter drop for: - Chapter 2 of My Least Favourite Life (Weller cheats, we are wholly unsurprised) and accompanying fic playlist; and - Chapter 48 of Your Love And My Due Diligence (Andy visits Noel and baby Donny, it's the BE album chapter, y'all knew it was coming) and accompanying truncated* and full fic playlist.

*Playlist entirely in service of getting everyone to listen to the selected tracks by Beady Eye off the BE album.

[lifeisatrial]

@libreliebres-blog knows me so well because, although I am on semi-hiatus from writing, I did ideate in my waking hours a short fic set in the universe of My Least Favourite Life about Goldie and Noelle having a brief but intense fling circa 1994/early 1995 (which I will probably write as a separate part at some point) as part of Noelle's escalating denial of 'no, I don't need to date my brother, I will just date brother substitutes' (before she moves on to date Weller and he moves on to date Björk). Emotionally repressed and in denial Noelle, my beloved.

[lifeisatrial]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapter 4 of the girl Noel/Weller Divorce fic. Noel and Liam double point of view. In which Weller’s being passive aggressive about the divorce, Noel talks to Paolo Hewitt and thinks about the past, and Liam takes action.

‘Tell him to file the fuckin’ papers.’  ‘I can’t tell him to do anything.’ ‘He listens to you.’  Paolo looks at her incredulously. She amends—‘More than most.’ 

[lifeisatrial]

Today I also found out that Lera Lynn wrote a song with the lyrics I grew a man from my rib and he walks beside me. Basically, my real life might be falling apart, but in my girl Noel AU world-building, I never stop winning.

[lifeisatrial]

Can't believe I'm looking at the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 for the sake of fic. What the fuck. Edit: Can't believe I'm reading Owens v Owens for research for this fic.