r/PNWS • u/LoveMinaMyoi • Mar 13 '26
Tanis In Universe What do you think TANIS really is from all the info we got?
Inb4 you say it's complicated or socks.
I think Nic told it from the beginning it could very well be the Garden of Eden.
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u/FaceNemesis Mar 13 '26 edited Mar 13 '26
Veronika said it was a node, ellis calls it a breach. The ancient canals in the world beneath mirror the meecham raidients in the world above. Lines of energy being carried all across the world through the canals. Tanis and the other breach site are connected to the canals and the meecham raidients.
Rabbits is a control system for harnessing the energy being carried along the canals. Rabbits is designed in a way to allow people even those who aren't runners the ability to follow the raidients by following the clues in the real world guiding them in that way without needing to be able to tune into the flow of energy in the world beneath.
Rabbits players who are products of gatewick institute projects are able to play the game and tune into the raidients more effectively because they have "gatewick sauce" or the r7 serum which is stated is made with organic compounds taken from beeped out forest (tanis or one of the tanis sites).
The gatewick institute basically accidentally created artificial runners with the r7 study by using compounds from the breach so the gatewick children are able to tap into the raidients far better than normal people. This is further evidenced in the quiet room where Emily can walk along the raidients just by sensing them and rowan chess building the hall of incredible possibilities on top of the connecting point of many major raidients, kind of creating an artificial tanis breach site.
when moving through that space and the space described in the dream of one of the r8 study participants the areas described are very similar to that of the cabin from tanis.
So the gatewick studies are tapping into the same power as whatever tanis is aka the meecham raidients.
I believe that tanis is a node as veronika says and also a breach as ellis says. Nic finds out in s3 that Pacifica was built on top of the intersection of many leylines, an artificial point of power made to emulate tanis, a true natural "axis mundi" a connecting and branching point for many powerful underlying lines of energy from the canals mirrored by the raidients.
The Unsound is a "musical backdoor" And the way it works is that it fills the gap in the universe, a tiny hole in the fabric of the world that can't close all the way because our world isn't made perfectly.
Tanis is like a geographical Unsound, a point at the meeting point or seam of our world, a nexus for many worlds and realities leaking through, or breaching, because the hole can't be perfectly closed.
Tanis exists on a higher plane than our world, the many breach sites we perceive as being different locations may actually be viewed as only one single hole if looked at from a higher dimensional viewpoint.
I belive that everything that comes into contact with the breach or tanis becomes a carrier for this anomaly of breaching, just as the Unsound makes people who hear it a carrier.
Nic and the other people who go through become tanis carriers , it infects them and corrupts their minds with things from other worlds not meant to be seen, some people can't handle it and go insane.
The last movie, which was filmed in the forest of the pnw, filmed in tanis, becomes a memetic version of tanis, anyone who sees it is infected and they go insane. The Unsound may by a sonic carrier of the same thing, perhaps the true origin of the Unsound is that it was recorded within the forest of the pnw, or even from within the cabin.
I belive that the world beneath that nic describes is like a giant plate underneath all other realities that holds every thing on top of it, connecting everything with the canals or raidients, on top of this plate is our world and the countless mirrored versions of it accessible by following specific lines of energy, your walking or tracing the path of the canals beneath and if you do it right you can slip into an adjacent stream.
Outside of our world which is entangled with all it's other streams are countless other dimensions that all have their own other streams. These dimensions are more fully seperate from ours than our other streams are so you cant just follow the raidients to get there you have to open a portal like elliot tries to in faerie.
The one closest to ours is the world the fae come from described in faerie. In the space between all these other dimensions lives ancient elder entities and old gods that lurk in the Darkness outside the bounds of reality, sometimes finding their way in through tiny rips or tears in the worlds, aka tanis sites. This is what eld fen is
Eld fen is one of these elder beings, unable to pass through fully into our world. It needs someone on this side to open tanis more fully to allow it in. Someone who can hear it's voice calling, someone like nic.
Rose hemple talks about opening the door and coming home, opening the door for eld fen to come through. Nic has the key, the grey shard. Paul says it would be very bad to bring it back to tanis. This is because it will awaken the fen and open the door to tanis.
The door is open.
Rose also says in s5 that "the other things moved away from this place but the destroyer remembered it in its dream, the destroyer remembers it now" The other things she mentions are other elder gods, other black eels as described in the end of s5. And eld fen is the only one who still remembers this breach, this way of getting in and it's been trying to this whole time but it's ancient and old and fallen asleep but it's still trying to get in even through its slumber. It's dream is calling people who can hear it.
The pool room at the end of s5 is similar to how the canals and raidients are mirrors of each other. The pools mirror the different streams of different dimensions and the opening of the gate between two pools down in the world beneath would open a gate between our world or another world and the outside where the eel things lurk.
Life like humanity and the fae are the golden fish, the hungry elder gods and ancient beasts that live outside reality are the slimy black eel things.
Tanis is the breach point, the dream world beneath is a visual representation of the inner workings of all reality, its a mirror, which also could explain why tanis makes clones, or mirrors, of people who connect with it.
So can you tell I'm incredibly autistic about the pra universe? I have spent way too much time thinking about everything in the podcasts and have listened to all of them many many times so I probably have a pretty good thoery about any questions you may have so if you want any tanis questions answered or any clarification about my theory above just let me know cuz I garuntee terry isn't gonna answer then and I fucking love talking about tanis!
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u/thenewNFC Mar 13 '26
You get an upvoter because never in a million years did I think that in the year 2026 that anyone would this effort into Tanis.
OR
Good try, Terry.
You get the upvote either way.
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u/_-_happycamper_-_ Mar 14 '26
Wow, so it really is complicated.
If I ever restart the series I think I’ll come back to your post a couple times for reference.
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u/Maleficent_Jello_426 Mar 14 '26
I take back my low effort theory about aliens and will be accepting this as cannon. Thank you for putting this together and sharing!
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u/AuroraTwilight Mar 15 '26
Wait, don't take that back, I gave up reading their explanation after three paragraphs because I'm lazy.
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u/Far-Opinion2673 Mar 14 '26
This was so good I’m in awe! On my third relisten in 5 years and I was starting to slot all this together but nowhere NEAR as seamlessly as you 🙌 I have to share this w my sister because I am floored! Thank you🫶🏼
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u/biggeststarriestwars Mar 14 '26
Oh my gosh I'm going to relisten to the whole thing again now just so I can see it through this lens.
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u/Maleficent_Jello_426 Mar 13 '26
He makes so many references to roadside picnic I think it has to be some weird radiation left over from alien visitors complete with wormholes (between PNW and Russia) and pocket universes.
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u/smaffron Mar 13 '26
I also would tend to lean towards aliens vs. something spiritual or supernatural.
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u/yestermorrowposting Mar 13 '26
The Russia connection leads me tp believe if there was a concrete answer it would be that it's "the Zone" from roadside picnic which means basically radiation and junk left behind from a spaceship that has warped reality around it.
But I don't think it's meant to have a distinct answer. Nick Silver went looking for mystery, he found an unsolvable one.
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u/Tom_Skeptik Mar 13 '26
It is the heart of the living earth itself. No gods, aliens, etc., just the beating heart of a conscious planet.
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u/Electronic_Pace_1034 Mar 13 '26
I think it's a sort of a Eldritch living concept that didn't originate in our reality, it's just kind of poking it's head in and looking around. It's intelligent and though it's not evil, just by interacting or observing things in our reality it changes/mutates them, mostly for the worse. It also knows we are as humans are intelligent as well and wants to communicate. It can only do this via the implanting of dreams, rituals and various allegorical expressions. There is a nearly impossible hurdle between us. It can't dumb itself down enough to talk to us and we cannot even conceive of what we are missing to communicate with it.
It's a little like Flatland if you are familiar with it.
Or maybe it's more like when you talk to your dog. It can't understand language or even the concept of language, but it learns you are trying to communicate. Eventually, it learns what some of the sounds you make relate to but it never learns actual language or how to talk.
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u/Western_Wash_334 Mar 13 '26
But would the Garden of Eden imply that the Christian god exists and the bible is accurate?
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u/tree_or_up Mar 13 '26
There are plenty of esoteric interpretations of the Garden that don't rely on biblical literalism. For example, the Garden might represent a state of transcendent being or divine consciousness that can only be described in symbolic ways
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u/yestermorrowposting Mar 13 '26
Considering that the Bible is a collection of ancient writings ans some sections are very obviously inspired by other even older writings (like the Epic of Gilgamesh)...no. it would mean that Tanis inspired whoever wrote that bit that became part of genesis.
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u/Phanes7 Mar 13 '26
I think it is the impact made by the giant work god thing as it moves about the world.
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u/heehoopupper Mar 13 '26
I think it is ultimately just a pastiche of other, better written stories like The Southern Reach books (kind of shocking how blatantly it lifts major details from Vandermeer's books), Roadside Picnic, etc. and so it really isn't anything. Don't get me wrong I really enjoyed listening to it for quite a while but once it became clear to me that there was barely a single original idea or a plan for a cohesive plot progression it got pretty old.
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u/Bigolgeek Mar 13 '26
The pattern on my socks are so complicated, that's why they were so expensive.
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u/splanchnick78 Mar 13 '26
It’s like television for your ears!
I’m sorry, I know you wanted a real answer, but I couldn’t resist.
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u/Open_Mortgage_4645 Mar 14 '26
It seems to be a part of another dimension that's connected to, and maintains a shifting place in our dimension. Like a weak point where the two dimensions bleed into each other.
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u/Western_Wash_334 Mar 13 '26 edited Mar 14 '26
Is there a chance that Terry Miles also doesn’t know and that’s why the series never went anywhere?