Recently, Pacific Northwest Stories started releasing bonus episodes of Tanis through Patreon. This is becoming a pretty standard practice (Lore has been doing this for months). I think it’s a good model, and it works particularly well for Tanis.
As I said in my original and subsequent reviews of Tanis, the show functions best when it is cataloging strange events that might theoretically be ascribed to the bizarre influence of Tanis (the concept). I argued that the organizing theme of Tanis wasn’t working because it was too vague and unconnected (I adjusted my stance by mid season; we’ll see what I think in my end-of-season review when I post it), but that the storytelling of the “episodes” of Tanis were individually outstanding, and that I wanted more of those.
Well, these mini episodes seem to be exactly that!
The first one follows one Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard, whose disturbing medical practice makes the jump from dangerous to disastrous upon her move to the Pacific Northwest. The first bonus episode felt like an episode of Lore, and when I get time I plan to dig into it to see if it was inspired by anything true or whether it’s made up out of whole cloth.
In any event, these mini episodes are probably going to end up being one of the best sources of Spookypasta in the foreseeable future. I plan on supporting Tanis on Patreon, and I recommend doing the same, if only to get these bonus episodes. You also get a premium transcript, which would certainly be helpful for me as a reviewer, but they are planning on producing them like a digital magazine, which would make Tanis a fully multi-modal composition. Plus, Tanis sounds like something that would work great as a digital magazine, so this looks like a win all around.
The pricing is a little steep (you have to do $10/month to get the mini episodes), but I think it’s probably worth it to pony up for the mini episodes and premium PDFs. I’ll post an update here once I’ve committed and have looked at all the extra content.
