Offshoot from and sister podcast to yesterday's offering, Tanis follows the attempt of one of The Black Tapes producers to unravel the mystery of the short story 'Where is Tanis?', supposedly written by Jack Parsons for a pulp science-fiction magazine n the early 1950s. What unravels is a wider conspiracy involving the myth of Tanis, and exactly what it is: a place, a thing, an entity, a state of mind?
New clues, events and characters appear regularly throughout the series' narrative arc (often to be dopped suddenly, then unexpectedly resurrected in a later episode), all indicating how deeply interwoven the myth of Tanis is throughout the interstices of the everyday of the podcast's imagined world; however, over two seasons none of these have ultimately offer a clear or satisfactory indication of exactly what Tanis is: a cabin in the woods with uncertain physical dimensions, which mysteriously disappears and maybe the location of a 'breach' marking the intrusion of something alien (Tanis?) into our world; strange cults worshipping Tanis without really knowing what it is; movies found on the deep web which depict horrifyingly unspeakable acts, and which are somehow associated with Tanis; something known as Eld Fen - possibly a monstrous, primordial being (and also the name of a text about said being) which, as is made explicit in the mythology of the Tanis podcast, was also the original inspiration behind Lovecaft's Cthulhu Mythos - and which may be Tanis in the process of waking up...None - or maybe all - of these things may be relevant to understanding the mystery of Tanis. But as a serial podcast, Tanis is ultimately about the journey and not the destination - its concern is not really with the resolution of a mystery, but rather an interrogation of the ways - whether they be religion, myth-making or conspiracy theories - by which we seek to make meaningful that which is truely unknowable. All of which hopefully indicates that Tanis has a very Lovecaftian (albeit not typically Cthulhuvian) vibe to it.
Listen and be mystified.
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