How to make tap interfaces persistent after reboot?
I cannot see, for the life of me, why this question should be down-voted. It is clear, correct, it has a well-defined answer. I have upvoted it.
You are using obsolete utilities like tunctl, you should use ip instead. The correct stanza for /etc/network/interfaces is:
iface tap1 inet manual
pre-up ip tuntap add tap1 mode tap user root
pre-up ip addr add 192.168.1.121/24 dev tap1
up ip link set dev tap1 up
post-up ip route del 192.168.1.0/24 dev tap1
post-up ip route add 192.168.1.121/32 dev tap1
post-down ip link del dev tap1
Your mistake was in using static instead of manual. The reason is that, since you are trying to give to the virtual interface an address in the same subnet as your main interfae (wlan0/eth0), when it tries automatically to add a local route,
ip route add 192.168.1.0/24 dev tap1
it finds that such a route already exists, and it complains. If you use manual instead of static, you are allowed to delete this route, which is of course useless.
Also, you should add a route
ip route add 192.168.1.121/32 dev tap1
to inform your kernel that there is an exception to the route
ip route add 192.168.1.0/24 dev eth0/wlan0
That's all.