#for all those serious subjects out there begging to be addressed with whimsy

[onlythemad1s]

I put this to you...

Pushing Daisies AU of The Greatest Showman. Initially, I wanted Anne as Ned and Phillip as Chuck, only they don't meet as children and Phillip is the one who gets shipped to boarding school while Anne's parents die and WD is left taking care of the both of them. PT is Emerson, and he sees what Anne can do, so he makes her a business proposition to make some mystery solving money on the side to help fund her up-and-coming pie business with her brother. And Phillip is the latest case, so Anne and PT go to talk to him, and she's the first thing he sees, and they have their Morgue Moment/funeral home Sleeping Beauty deal, and their eyes are locked so long that PT notices no one is listening to him, reads the room, and gets the hell out of dodge ala Emerson, and "Oh no, he's alive now," but the Carlyles think he's dead now, which he doesn't feel great about, but he gets to start his life over doing fun and liberating things instead of the oppressively upper crust garbage he had going on before. BUT... I also had to take into consideration: PT as Ned and Charity as Chuck, where they have their childhood romance deal, and they're forced to lose touch when she goes away to boarding school and his father dies-until one day when he sees what happened to her on the news. I see Anne and WD as running this detective business ala Emerson, and when they see what PT can do, he says he'll help them out for a cut of the reward, to which they agree. I want Jenny to be a waitress at PT's Pie Hole, and to get the arc that Olive got, rather than the one TGS gave her, (w/ just a little side of Hans Christian Andersen/ Felix Mendelssohn and Otto Goldschmidt as Randy Mann and Alfredo Aldarisio). So then Charity joins the gang bc the Hallets think she's dead, and she finally gets to have all the adventures PT promised her when they were kids, putting to use all that knowledge she accumulated as a Sheltered Rich Kid. And I cannot forget Phillip, who (after I considered for the PI with Anne still into trapeze ala the circus episode- only earlier in the story) I got it in my head to equate with The Narrator &/OR w/ a bit of an Olive-esque role in the vein of "Didn't get loved enough and I'm looking for meaning following a heaping amount of empty success in “X” career, so now I'm involved in some capacity-either in business with or telling stories about-this quirky ragtag group of mystery solvers," while he pines after the no-nonsense detective, Anne. 

In both scenarios I see Lettie as the coroner (or the new funeral director who takes over after the corrupt, grave-robbery one keels over) that wises up to the gang real quick and starts helping them out, either openly or in secret.