reading your recent chapter of YLAMDD has also made me think of another question!! i apologise in advance if it's been hinted at in one of the author's notes and i forgot or if you've talked about it on tumblr and i missed it 😭. but i was wondering if in your universe Noel still goes on tour with Weller as an opening act like he did in the real world for a while? (- daytrippindreamer on ao3 lol)
It hasn't been hinted at and I love that we're spiralling in the Noel(een)/Weller of it all together! No, touring together for anything other than a one off gig/appearance would be impossible, for various reasons.
1) Liam would spiral so bad, or she'd have to bring him along.
2) Re 1995 tour appearances in the real world, on the YLAMDD timeline at that point, Noel is just the songwriter/sister of the singer in Oasis, not really someone who performs. One thing to have someone feature or play on a studio album, another thing to publicly perform.
3) The media backlash against Noel is so horrific (per Chapter 13 in November 1997, Washington) from the one and only time Weller and Noel do a bigger/televised/recorded gig together in 1997 (while he's in the middle of a divorce) that Noel is like, Never fucking again. The chapter is from Liam's POV so he's underplaying it in his perception but. It's bad. And Noel definitely blames herself for the media backlash fucking with the success of the Be Here Now tour.
4) The most Noel and Weller could get away with in the early to mid-2000s is maybe one off, smaller gigs where she makes a surprise appearance, but this definitely has to be while she's publicly dating Meg Matthews so there is plausible deniability.
5) Slight spoiler for potentially a later chapter (although only referred to in passing), but Noel and Weller can only really perform freely and be seen out and about together from around the mid-2000s when the media reports that Noel is dating Sara (who is not in the music business and has a sober intellectual image), which means of course the public and the press are like ohhhh, Noel is gay gay (bisexual erasure in the mainstream press, we are not surprised). Some of the fanbase try to suggest there's still something going on between Noel and Weller, and get loudly shouted down because THAT'S HOMOPHOBIC.
6) When Noel has Donovan, half the fanbase/public think it's Weller's kid (but nobody knows if Donovan's an affair baby or this is a sperm donor situation for her and Sara, since Sara is very much the other parent and Weller's not involved). This is not helped by Noel shamelessly insinuating HEY REMEMBER WHEN I USED TO FUCK WELLER in the late 2010s every time someone brings up Liam's increasingly transparent solo lyrics (see chapter 17 in September 2019 when Matt is trying to nudge her in the podcast about Liam's songs being about her) or Donovan's parentage (see chapter 14 for the 2019 convo with Nicole about Donovan). But in any case, by the 2010s, Noel has been in the music business for so long, she's gone through the Oasis breakup, she has a successful solo career and she's older, so she really has a lot less fucks to give. She'll do what she wants. If she wants to write a song with Weller or perform with him or attend industry/charity events or gigs with him, she'll do it. (Can't tour together because Sara would explode.) But overall, the Noel/Weller thing is just less exciting/salacious for the media to report on by then, so it's really only hardcore fans speculating on fansites and messageboards most of the time.
I LOVED this ask (and anything that lets me ramble on about the worldbuilding) ❤️
