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TobyBartels comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 6 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Is there any consistency in which works of speculative fiction exist in MoR (as works of speculative fiction) and which ones actually happened (in some warped way) in MoR?
I had vaguely formed the hypothesis that Harry has read only things that appeared before 1991, so that anything after that is fair game for shout-outs. But I never seriously tested that. Seeing Peter Pevensie in Ch 65 has ruled this out (which means that probably lots of things already ruled it out that I didn't notice or forgot).
So how does it work? If Peter Pevensie was a real person in MoR, does this mean that C.S. Lewis didn't write The Chronicles of Narnia? Does this mean that Lewis didn't have the same influence on Tolkien? Does this mean that the version of The Lord of the Rings that Harry and Dumbledore have read is not quite the same as the version that you and I have read? Where does it all end???
Yes, I had the same rough hypothesis and it seems correct when amended with "Except when something else is funnier or more awesome"
Now we need TVTropes links: Rule of Funny, Rule of Cool (which links to more variations).
It's not clear. But I would guess that all works of speculative fiction that existed prior to 1991 exist identically in MoR, and some of them are based on actual events.
That's a pretty big change too then! How did Lewis learn of Peter Pevensie, and how did he ever manage to turn his story into a Christian allegory?
Oddly enough, this is basically a subplot in The Magicians.
For anything in the Harry Potter 'verse to make sense, we have to assume that some (most!) Muggle fantasy is a distorted account of the actual magical realm. Otherwise we're in Discworld territory, with the causality flowing in the other direction.
In the case of Narnia, the Christian allegory probably was the distortion. The Last Battle would have to have been completely made up, anyway.
Maybe what's available of the true account was recorded by Susan. She stopped believing in Aslan after she became a Christian.
Ironic!
Alternatively, the true account could be what appeared in Omake 3, where Susan presumably never believes in Aslan.
Either way, Lewis becomes a pretty unscrupulous liar. As I'm rather fond of him, I don't like this conclusion, but it's EY's fiction.
Does one account or another have to be distorted? Alternate universes are pretty common in fanfic.