Nature of the Sound

[Kesey]

Now, obviously we can't really draw 100% line for line, blow for blow comparison here, but Shadowbringers directly references Shakespeare's, "The Tempest." and also the movie, Forbidden Planet(which is also heavily inspired by The Tempest). In Forbidden Planet, the Krell destroy their own civilization by inadvertently making the monsters from their dreams a reality.

But "The Tempest" monsters aren't represented by character's direct fears, they actually represented the natives of the new land (referring to the American colonies) and yes there is fear there, but its of the audience's making over the existence of peoples they already felt were sub-human. Furthermore, because the image of Amaurot that the WOL and the Scions see is creation of Emet's memory, using the area to heavily reference "The Tempest" directly calls back to a critical character in the play, Prospero, who is a mage who uses magic to manipulate the characters to do as he wants--just like Emet was doing. The fact that the racist under tone of Prospero and other European characters of the play tend to use racial identity to look down others then echoes how the Ascians have come to view the people of the source and the shards as lesser beings. This is literally thing about Shadowbringers that made me say that was "kind of genius" instead of the general "oh it references Shakespeare" of the story telling.

But the Shakespeare references don't end there. The main theme is called "Tomorrow and Tomorrow" which is titled as such to recall the famous "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" speech made by Macbeth, from the play Macbeth. What's key here is that Emet, much like Macbeth, believes they are invincible, destiny has chosen them rule and win, and can't conceive how they will fall. Macbeth's speech is the moment that he realizes that following the evil path of murder has lead him to a meaningless life, so does Emet realized in his final moments where he begs us to remember we once lived. Not to mention the concurring themes of good trimuphing over evil.

Now as much as I would love for all of this to be a reference to Chrono Trigger and some how Lavos = The sound, the real monsters are the Ascians, the actual people doing evil and manipulating humankind from the shadows. Furthermore, I'm having a really hard time tracking the support this thread and others give to those Ascians who have absent mindedly neglected to tell us what actually caused the sound, because those guys are liars. They don't want us to know because they caused it. They weren't the benevolent civilization that they have projected to us, because it they were so great how did they make the leap from superior enlightenment to we're gonna cannibalize 13 worlds and the source to bring it all back? A superior benevolent society knows their time is up and doesn't claw it back from the brink of nothingness.