One might call those things that exist 'the books' or 'CS Lewis's notes' or 'the GM's notes'.
It is not the same as saying that Narnia exists.
Does Pegasus have feathers?
If you answer "no, because Pegasus isn't real", I'm fairly sure most people would see that as a severely and unnecessary pedantic answer. Yet by your argument here it is
always 100% objectively wrong to say "Pegasus has feathers."
"Exist" can have different meanings in different senses. "The Chronicles of Narnia" exist as a book series in our universe, as material objects we can interact with. "Narnia" does not (much to my chagrin) exist as a material location we could interact with. "Narnia" exists as a parallel world to that of Digory Kirke, Polly, the Pevensie children, etc.
But we can make similar statements about all sorts of things. Does the law of non-contradiction exist as a material object we could interact with? I don't think anyone here would say it does. And yet I don't think anyone here would argue that that means it absolutely does not, in any conceivable way, exist at all whatsoever. Does "red" exist? Well, things that emit or reflect light of certain frequencies exist, but does
red exist, itself? Not materially, not in absence of the aforementioned emission or reflection, but understood as an abstraction, a property shared by many objects, I don't think anyone here would argue that "red" does not at all exist in any way whatsoever. It just doesn't exist in the way my hands exist (setting aside extreme skepticism as G.E. Moore did).
So, yes. You are correct that these things do not have tangible, material existence. They are not objects we could move around with our hands. They are not sounds we could hear with our ears. They are not sights we can see with our eyes.
Is that the same as saying that they absolutely do not exist at all, whatsoever, in any sense? I hope I have shown above that
no, it is
not the same as saying that.
Ultimately, this is why I was (and have been) using phrases like "the fact of the matter" and the like. I want there to be facts that can be discovered, not just an ever-growing body of fiction created by my own hands. I see a fundamental difference between myself
creating fictional truths within a fictional space, and myself discovering truths and then piecing them together (by abductive, inductive, or deductive reasoning) to determine something that is true regardless of what I or anyone else think about the matter. The latter is, as far as I'm concerned, functionally equivalent to an IRL scientist investigating a question they find interesting, or a logician applying the rigorous and extremely strict rules of logic to process a given claim, or a mathematician proving a new statement solely on the basis of the rigid rules of arithmetic without inserting any new axioms or the like.
When one is instead
creating fiction, even when guided by well-structured and wisely-written rules, one is
not bound only by things beyond one's control. One is allowed to invent whatever is interesting, or exciting, or unexpected, just so long as none of that outright
negates what is known to be true. But there are many many ways to
undercut what was merely
thought to be "known" when it wasn't truly known. Hence why I have so often mentioned the issue of false clues. I have never seen anyone here show me how the rules of Cthulhu Dark or Apocalypse World or anything else would
prevent someone (player or GM) from creating new fiction that functionally invalidates old information by "revealing" that it was a false clue all along and the
real situation was something else entirely. Such a thing has even been explicitly said, in this thread, as a common part of mystery fiction and thus entirely appropriate as a move someone could make (player or GM alike, assuming it conforms to the rules). But that very admission is saying there is no fact of the matter: there is simply our creation of new fiction in whatever directions are interesting. The rules don't forbid it, and the fiction cannot (indeed, these posters claim
should not) limit it.
