"Welcome little pony to the land of those forgotten."
Inspiration Manifestation: Family At Nowhere
My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic
"But instead, I let you become something awful."
Those were the last words Rarity heard. Her day had been beautiful, after reading the spell form the book Spike had given her, she had found herself with the power to create or alter anything with what she pictured in her mind.
She had improved Ponyville in such beautiful ways! She had also improved the ponies in many ways too! And there was Spike, giving her the support she needed to keep her inspired!
She had also completed years worth of dresses in one night. The lack of sleep did not distract her, she was an artist, and now she could translate what was in her mind into reality. She was free to express herself as never before!
She could make ANYTHING, she could make anything into anything. Such absolute freedom! It was intoxicating! She even made Spike a nice jeweled suit of armor, now he really was her little knight!
Rainbow Dash and Applejack, she had such beauty, she helped them finally share it with the world.
Naturally she was inspired a lot by the Crystal Empire, she had never forgotten its beauty, and had the new and improved crystal houses were truly a thing of beauty! The bright and shining streets, the beautiful ponies, it was wonderful!!!
She felt so excited! And so inspired! Manehattan, Fillydelphia, Canterlot! She knew Celestia would LOVE her improving the Capital! She could just imagine the look on Coco's face when she made Manehatten the city of dreams in fact and not just in name! Fillydelphia had been ravaged by Parasprites too, she knew they'd appreciate her making their city a thing of beauty as she had Ponyville!
If Sweetie Belle felt like putting on another play, Rarity would give her support that would make her costumes look trivial!
She could see it all! And she'd make it reality! He and her little Spickey-Wickey!
She would spread her gift to everypony!
Then Spike said those words. That her work had not improved things. And that his silence had let her become something awful.
Those were the last words Rarity had heard.
"Ugh. What a headache. Spike what is . . . Spike? SPIKE! Where are you? . . . And when did it get to be night?" Rarity shook her head.
"My, what a dreadful and dreary place." The green eyed Rarity said herself. "And . . . why isn't there any stars in the sky? And is that Luna's moon? I swear it looks even more barren and dull than when it lost the Mare In The Moon . . . I swear this place makes the Diamond Dogs' den look like a five-star hotel."
She seemed to be in a crater, surrounded by frost covered black rocks and what she could only described as 'so dark they glowed' blue rock veins . . . Rarity realized how that combination of words made no sense, but she couldn't interpret it any other way. That they pulsed almost like real veins wasn't something she tried to think about.
There was no wind. No noise at all.
"How in Equestria did I end up here? . . . Well, I'm going to get any answers just standing around here." Rarity shivered. "Blast it it's cold, when did it suddenly become Winter? It's not scheduled for several months yet! Ugh! What I wouldn't give for a sweeter right about now! OH RIGHT! Oh silly of me!"
She pictured the sweeter in her mind and . . . nothing?
"W-what?"
She tried again. But it was like the book's magic was gone . . . no, that wasn't right, it couldn't be. But . . . it was like there was nothing for her to call upon.
"Dear Celestia, what is going on?" Rarity whimpered.
"NEW ARRIVAL!" Said a melodically but hollow voice.
"SÍ! STRAIGHT FROM THE HEART WORLD AMIGA!" Said another voice with a Mexicolt accent.
"Think we'll actually be able to keep this one? I didn't even get to paint a picture of them." Said a third voice.
"Since when do you paint anymore amiga?"
"I could have had a blank canvas of them."
Rarity heard the voices, but didn't hear them, that didn't make sense either! It was like an echo, or a forgotten memory of an echo.
"Excuse me dears! My name is Miss Rarity Belle! And I am the greatest artist in all of Ponyville, could you please tell me where I am please?"
"Isn't this a song! She can still say her name!" A purple pegasus fluttered over the edge and landed, or maybe a faded after image of one.
"Only one? Better than nothing." Said the shadow of a yellow earth pony mare with a festive red mane.
The shadow of a pale pink pony with a rainbow colored mane looked at Rarity with an artist's eye. "You know, I think we might have gotten our hopes up."
"What hopes?" Said the pegasus.
The artist pony did an imitation of a recording of a laugh. "Got me there! I thought we had our whinny princess back. But I think our new arrival might be just trash."
"HEY! THERE IS NO NEED TO BE RUDE!"
"We're ALL trash amiga."
"I'm saying that she's not nothing, she's LESS than nothing."
"Excuse me! But it's very rude to talk about a mare who is standing right in front of you! And I am not 'less than nothing' and it's asinine to call a pony such and is no way to open up a proper greeting. You should introduce yourself properly to a pony you've just met."
The three did their fake laugh. Three more emerged from the edge of the crater, than more, and more, Rarity realized she was surrounded.
"False alarm amigas, she not a retcon, she's not 'erased', she's not even a shadow."
"She has a beautiful mane though, I want to comb it, over and over, and over." Said a white shadow of an earth pony with blue eyes, with tail that was several shades of blond with purple, teal, pink, and orange for her tail.
"You don't want anything." The purple pegasus shadow.
"Not true. And I can PRETEND I want something though! Let's try some of those juicy memories inside her!"
Rarity paled. "Now now! I don't know what you mean! But I can just SHARE lots of interesting memories with you if you want! There's no need to act like changelings!"
They began to close in around her.
An high-pitched earth piercing scream echoed across the wasteland, and Rarity felt herself grabbed from behind and was lifted up into the black sky, she saw who was carrying her had a yellow coat and a pink mane.
"F-Fluttershy?" Rarity tried to look up but couldn't get a view as her hopeful rescuer flew at high speed towards several stacks of black stones, the winged shadows following right behind her, but her rescuer proved more angle even if followed with a single minded dauntlessness.
Rarity would have lost her lunch if she had eaten all day from the dizzying twists and turns they took, finally her carrier knocked one of the piles over and lost their pursuers in the dust cloud.
Rarity got a look at the landscape. It went on forever, she saw a black ocean in the distance. Scattered here and there were clutches of houses, all of them looking so dreadfully barren that it was hard to imagine anypony having ever lived in them.
There was a massive desert in the opposite direction of the black ocean, that looked just as lifeless and empty. And everywhere, littered about the frozen still land where shadows of ponies, dragons, zebra, and creatures that Rarity had only heard described to her, like humans.
Finally, they landed, at the base of a hill with a snaking trail with dead grass. The hill had a steep cliff on all sides except the trail, and overlooked a gorge.
Her rescuer finally let her go and Rarity turned to thank her. She gasped.
"FLUTTERSHY?! BUT-HOW?"
It was Fluttershy. But not Fluttershy. It was Flutterbat.
Her mutated friend just shrugged. She made several animalistic sounds, and tilted her head to the top of the hill, and without a word began to trot up the hill. Flutterbat turned her head at Rarity as the unicorn just stood there and then tossed her head a bit to encourage her to follow.
"But Fluttershy, Twilight cured you! Fluttershy where are we? What happened? Where is everypony else?"
Flutterbat snorted and fluttered behind her and pushed her foreword.
"No need to be pushy Flutterhy, I'm going."
Satisfied, Flutterbat lead the newcomer up the hill.
It was the last ponies she suspected to find waiting for her at the top.
"Cheerilee? Big Macintosh?! Please forgive my manners but where in Celestia's name are we? And what happened to poor Fluttershy?!" Rarity pointed at the pegasus, Rarity was ready to cry.
Rarity noticed the two were holding hooves, they were looking at each other, then Cheerilee looked at her old school friend.
Cheerilee sighed. "Welcome Rarity. I'm sorry to see a piece of you here."
"'A piece of me?' Cheerilee you're not making any sense! And what does this have to do with Fluttershy?"
The bat pony rolled her eyes.
Cheerilee spoke. "I'm sorry Rarity, there is no kind way to put this. Rarity . . . everything goes somewhere. Lost objects. Unfinished songs. Faded dreams. Forgotten memories. Nothing truly disappears. It can be remade into another form, that's how magic creates things from mana. But it's never truly ceases to exist. When we think something is 'gone', it has to be somewhere it has 'gone to'."
"Cheerilee, forgive me for my pushiness, but please, where are you going with this?"
"Rarity . . . have you ever heard about a pony, who while enchanted, but still acting without direct orders from the enchanter? Were aware of their surroundings, made decisions, but didn't remember a thing when the enchanted was lifted?"
"Well . . . there was you and Big Macintosh with the love poison, sorry again for Sweetie Belle's behavior that day, she meant well. And poor Fluttershy when she LAST became . . .THAT!"
The Flutterbat looked at her indignantly.
"Sorry Fluttershy! I didn't mean anything rude! I apologize! It's just . . . I don't know what's going at all!" Rarity felt the tears now.
"Rarity . . ." Cheerilee said slowly, "What happened before you came here?"
Rarity recounted her tale, going into concise detail, Cheerilee asked her questions more than once.
"Yer here Rarity." Big Mac suddenly spoke, surprising all present. "Because ya ain't Rarity."
"WHAT?! That's absurd! Not Rarity? What am I then a changeling?!"
"Nope. Ya imprinted on Rarity, yer Rarity's memories of when she was enchanted by that book you talked about, her heart and mind rejected them because they didn't match up how she normally is. Ya could say ya are the spell, naw, that's too simple. Yer the Rarity that existed between when the spell was done, and the Rarity that ceased ta be when the spell was broken. This here place is full of us! Enchantments. Charm spells. Ya name it, any time somepony doesn't remember what they did while bein' magically shabanged."
Rarity felt weak. "Then . . .those, ponies I saw before?"
"Nope. They're . . . ya could call'em after images maybe, impressions of ponies who got plucked out of the world fer one reason or another. They ain't ponies."
"This . . . this is all dream."
Flutterbat slapped her and hissed at her angrily.
Cheerilee translated. "She's saying the sooner you realize this isn't a dream, the better. The shadows of existence, that's what they're called, look down on us. They say we're not 'real' even by their standards. But we do have memories, something ripe and juicy for them, helps them forget for a little while they're just hallow shells."
" . . . Have you been thinking of a way to . . . get home?"
"If Rarity ever somehow remembers what she did . . . yes . . . but . . . don't get your hopes up . . .that . . . pretty much never happens." Big Mac said.
Flutterbat hissed again, and made a complex dance with her wings.
Cheerilee said, "She says that we don't have homes. The only things that end up here? Are things that don't have a place. Don't have a home. We don't even have an afterlife. We're not allowed into Tartarus or Elysium. This place is for, 'left over' or maybe it's better say 'never left', since we don't have a place to return from."
"And you . . you've all been here since . . . since those days?" Rarity admitted, she had given it a first thought, after all, her friends were not themselves when enchanted, so there was no need to dwell on it. Now she knew who had been instead.
They all nodded.
"I'm sorry." Rarity whispered.
Cheerilee hugged her. "So am I."
Rarity tensed expecting a ambush . . . not came . . . Cheerilee just hugged her, holding Big Mac's hoof still.
"What . . . what do you do here?"
"Remember mostly, it's all lost memories like us can do really," Big Mac said. "Don't worry 'bout bein' hungry or thirsty or goin' ta the little filly's room . .. memories ain't know fer that either."
"So . . . you don't get shocked . . . know that . . . draconequi live here."
"WHAT?" Rarity pulled out of the hug. "You mean Discord is here?! This is all one of his games isn't it?!"
Cheerilee shook her head, "I'm sorry Rarity, it isn't. And . . . good or bad . . . I haven't seen him here. But creatures like him . . . but they never seem to bother us . . . they take note of us even less than they do the existence shadows. What's more real? A shadow or a memory after all."
Rarity narrowed her eyes, and looked at Flutterbat, "Well you're certainly more real than those . . . things . . . You didn't have to risk yourself to help me, you didn't have to put yourself in danger to rescue me. You did that of your own choice. And that makes you more of a pony than they are."
Flutterbat smiled, trotted over to Rarity and nuzzled her and folded her leathery wings around her. She purred like a kitten almost. Rarity hesitated, then hugged her back.
She looked at the couple. "So, you really understand everything she's saying?"
"She can't express it words, when she first arrived, she was just raw instinct, but . . . that isn't all she is. Though it took a while to learn the language she was using," Cheerilee said.
"I'm not giving up on escaping this place."
"Ya'd be a shadow of ya gave up that easily Rarity," Big Mac said.
Cheerilee sighed, "Rarity, we'd all leave if we could, but the whole reason we're here is because we have nowhere to go back to. We don't exist."
"Now YOU are sounding like those things-"
"HEY!"
"Sorry Big Mac darling." Rarity slowly stroked Flutterbat's mane. "But if we can think and feel, if we can remember, if we can make our own choices. Then we exist. We have hearts."
"We're not quite those ponies . . . I remember all my students, I remember loving them, I remember all my hopes and dreams, my family, but I don't fell despair at never being able to see them again. If I was really Cheerilee, I'd have never stopped crying. Never seeing Scootaloo and her friends earn their cutie marks? Never being able to get Diamond Tiara to see hurting her classmates was wrong? Not seeing the wonderful adults my students would become? If I can't break down in tears at never seeing that, then I have no right to claim I have a life of a pony name Cheerilee."
Cheerilee began shaking. And Rarity realized, Sweetie Belle, Spike, her friends . . . she truly was separated from them, even in death she was separated from them but . . . she didn't matter because there was another Rarity with them right now. She would not be missed. And Rarity realized in spite of herself she wasn't crying. She couldn't cry at not crying.
"I don't care."
"Rarity?"
"I may not be able to cry, but I still love Sweetie Belle, maybe I can't express it, but I can still feel it. And the world I wanted to make FOR everypony? I still think it would have been beautiful. I still think I could have improved pony's lives. I choose to believe!"
Unseen by the living memories, on an outcropping a short distance away was a shadow of a pony with a puzzle and magnifying glass cutie mark.
"Choose to believe..." Puzzlemint whispered.
Rarity pointed at Flutterbat, "The other said when you first arrived here you were just blind instinct! But you CHOSE to come and help me, you CHOSE to risk yourself and help me. You're angry when insulted, you don't like seeing me sad, that isn't the blind instincts of an animal."
Flutterbat looked at her in surprise and awe.
Rarity looked at the couple, "Cheerilee, Big Mac, Sweetie Belle told me that under the love poison you could only talk about each other, only cared about each other, didn't think about your friends or family at all. But you've been talking to me, explaining things to me . . . I don't care what this horrible empty place is. I don't care what you say we are or what those things say we are. If we capable of growing and changing, that makes us alive. Even if this entire place is dead, we're still alive!"
Flutterbat hugged her wings and gave out a chitter and hiss.
"'For the good it does in a place like this." Cheerilee translated.
"Then why hadn't any of you given up? Did I show up JUST AFTER all of you? No? Then why?" Rarity struck a dramatic pose lifted her head towards the sky. "Because . . . where there are friends, there's meaning! And eternity isn't so bad!" She looked at the three warmly, "If you have somepony to share it with."
She held out her hoof. The other three looked at each other, and each put their hoof to hers.
Flutterbat made a soft purr.
"We've been friends since grade-school Rarity, I won't stop being friends now."
"I agree. As long as ya've got friends with ya. Then ya ain't pointless. And ya know yer real. Jump, cause ya know yer friends will be there to catch ya."
They hugged.
A little shadow felt intoxicating hope radiate off them.
+++
"So no sign of them Puzzlemint?"
"None Starsong, they'ved moved on, and Tatzlwurm are now infesting the place. We don't dare go there now."
"Well, we have all eternity to find them in an infinite plane of existence, time is on our side."
"Maybe we should try making our own memories again."
"We're shadows of existence, we can create nothing."
"We can at least try, we already don't exist, Entropy can't do worse to us. The first step to doing is believe-ing."
"WHAT did you just say?" Triplet Treat gasped in awe.
"N-nothing. Nothing important. But if we have forever, if we already don't exist, if it doesn't matter if we hope or despair, why be afraid?"
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So they decided to become Anti-Nihilists?
img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130428070238/mlpfanart/images/2/22/Sweetie_Belle_%22seems_legit%22_reaction_image.png
That is a VERY interesting philosophical question you've asked in this story, and one akin to many of the issues raised by the possibility of personality backups and editing in a post-Singularity world. I'm not actually sure of the answer as to the degree of independence or survival of the version of a person under mind control of the type one can't remember. One alternate possibility is that it survives in the brain of the former victim, as a disconnected set of memory traces that slowly degrade.
5380776
In the great cosmic dust bin where things forgotten or thrown away are all dumped.
5380796
And for someone like me. Who hate that cliche so purely ("Where am I?") I have it written into the rules of conduct of the pony pov series that that DOES NOT happen in stories written in the pony pov verse.
5380884
I think it's an interesting question, and one which may acquire practical importance in the future. Mr. A perfectly duplicates his mind (and, one would assume, body), so that there is now a Mr. A0 (the original) and a Mr. A1 (the duplicate). Are one, or both, "really" Mr. A? If only one, which one, and why? If both, then in what relation do they stand toward one another, and any claims or obligations Mr. A possessed?
(and it can get much more complicated than that, Greg Egan makes almost a specialty of this sort of story).
If you're interested, I would argue that both are real -- this is just a form of exceptionally close twinning -- and they equally share any claims or obligations.
Mind Forks. They are forks of people.
They are still people.
Yeah, I'm of the opinion that if the personality does split as portrayed here, they would be separate entities.
That being said, there's no guarantee that personalities split. The I.M. seemed kind of like "Rarity Who Is High" to me, not "Completely Different Rarity." Flutterbat... yeeeeah Flutterbat might be a different personality. And the Love Poison is more just flat out mind control, blunt at that, so if we're assuming mind control changes personalities...
This leads to a great image: Flutterbat versus the legions of hell.
I like this one, not least for seeing IM Rarity, Love Poison Cheery and Big Mac, and Flutterbat manage to get themselves out of Hell (well, the Crushing Void or the Qlippothic Realm, anyway) simply be refusal to give in to the essetial despair of the realm and by still caring about each other.
5380986
Oh yes -- I completely agree with that. Person is as person thinks and does.
5381640
I also notice that all of them are transcending the original limits of their creation. Mac and Cheery still love one another, but sanely (and their originals clearly felt repressed love for one another anyway). Flutterbat's not totally feral. And Rarity is essentially sane.
5381640
They're still in limbo, they've chosen to simply make the BEST of it.
5381390
Oh Pony Hell's a completely different realm.
And I just really REALLY HATE the whole 'forget what was doing while under mind control' thing and is treated by writers like it's a law of physics.
5381749
Which was much Rarity's point! :-)
5381969 And I just really REALLY HATE the whole 'forget what was doing while under mind control' thing and is treated by writers like it's a law of physics.
Doesn't this depend a lot on how the fictional mind control works? If it shuts the target's mind down and lets the controller work them like a puppet, it seems to me like it would make sense for the victim to have little memory of what happened.
5380986
Perhaps.
5381979
No it doesn't. Seriously, FOR ME, it's bad. Trust me.
5381969
It's not the forgetting I have an issue with, although that is a concern. Again, I.M. Rarity seemed more "High on some drug" than "Totally different Rarity."
The real question is the Love Poison couple. They were basically BLUNTLY HAMMERED in this direction, dragged specifically down a particular path of behavior and blinded to any other choice. They had to be manipulated into any action by promising it as within the spectrum of the love poison. This is the equivalent personality scope of an RTS computer opponent or an opposing group of mooks in an FPS: Only able to take actions within their specified spectrum, barring cutscenes, but potentially very intelligent within that spectrum. To me, having the LP couple as a potential intelligence is almost the same as that opposing computer in Starcraft being granted citizenship.
Flutterbat, however, gets a pass because she does demonstrate an animal intellect, thus is able to learn, thus could become a separate mind.
5381971
My take on the respective mind control episodes in my fanon is that all of them left subconscious traces -- there's a conscious discontinuity between the normal minds and the controlled ones, so it's hard-to-impossible for any of the former victims to access those memories -- but they're still in there. All four probably have dreams, nightmares and half-memories of the episodes. Referring to my versions of them:
(1) Mac and Cheery - In their case, the consequences are positive, for one big reason -- they really had loved one another, long before coming under the effects of the Love Poison, but each had given up on it long (without even coming close to consummating that love) for different external social reasons. First, Cheery renounced her developing feelings for Mac because he was two years their junior when they were teenagers; then later, when they were both in their twenties and the age difference was irrelevant, Cheery felt ashamed of the way she'd taken Mac for granted and Mac both assumed she'd reject him and was too busy taking care of his sisters and grandmother to have much time to court her anyway. The trace-memories of romantic mutual obsession reminded them that they really loved one another, which is why they began courting again.
(2) Fluttershy - What Twilight actually did was to accidentally give Fluttershy a commmand to Shift into a bat-like form. The only reason this led to a physical transformation is that Fluttershy, as a half-Changeling, actually has the power to Shift already -- she's just never been properly trained in the power's use. (Unlike emotivory, Shifting requires practice for a Changeling to do well). In my fanon, Twilight's command has the beneficial effect of helping to activate Fluttershy's ability to Shift; eventually, she will gain the ability to do it consciously.
(3) Rarity - I'm not entirely sure how the Inspiration Spell worked, but my theory is that it essentially gave the part of her personality which is creative full control over her mind (she wasn't stopping to eat or sleep even though Spike explicitly suggested she should) while giving her super powers. I would imagine that Rarity would subconsciously-remember many of her designs, and that in consequence she may now find artistic creation easier (though she can't just conjure her creations any more).
Oh, and the episode looked to me like a key moment in her realizing how much she loved Spike. Though the writers may reset this all next season.
...Okay, I have to ask. What do you think happens when ponies get drunk or smoke or are drugged?
5382431
Those exist in real life.
5382760
In my opinion, being mind controlled by Chrysalis has to have been the worst experience of Shining's entire life, regardless of how much he remembers.
I have ideas for where this could go. A LOT of ideas. Excellent job Alex
5410642
Ideas?
And thank you!
5410815 oh yeah, this could be just the first chapter of a longer story. Take raritys exclamation for one thing. Just a little tweaking and you have them on a mission to unite the memories, and save them from the shadows trying to make something out of the darkness( or maybe trying to just move on) the draconi could play a role in that. The Shadows could be the big bads, maybe aided by some of the draconi, and the main one angry that their people are even choosing sides, when they are meant to ignore this world. There are a MILLION ways this could be furthered.
And yeah, no problem. This was a really fun read.
This was fun. Though I kinda wish there would be sequence to this, I can accept that it's marked as complete.
Keep going! ;)
5435322
Thanks! -) That means a lot.
At first I was a bit reluctant to give this a whirl since I'd rather read a happy fic then a Sad fic, but, this totally subverted my expectations, as usual Alex, you are one
of a writer. Have a dragon with a mustache. 
5536230
Thanks, this means a lot. The whole 'where am I, post mind magic' thing is a pet peeve of mine with how it's used pretty much like it was a law of physics.
5537679
Fair enough, we all have pet peeves, I don't mind it as much, as long as it's done right, for example, instead of just mind control, your body is posessed by say, Sombra's ghost, and he puts your mind to sleep as it were so that the concious mind can't resist and make things harder for him, or if the mind control spell forcibly removes the memories of the time you were controlled to protect important information but yeah, used like it's physics, I can see how it could get annoying.
5381969
My own headcanon on the whole 'forget-what's-done-under-mind-magic' shebang is that it's partially an aftereffect of the spell being lifted (sort of like how if you start spinning really fast and then stop, the floor seems to start trying out for a new career as a ceiling for a while before you get your bearings back). The pony's brain is attempting to reconcile their actions under the influence with the person they were beforehand, and is compromising by not making the memories consciously accessible (although, like someone commented earlier, the memories would still be there and surface as nightmares and suchlike).
Partially, it's because of how the brain works. The human brain contains a record of everything it has ever experienced, but there's a reason you can't recall every second of your life. The brain retrieves memories by making connections between them and other things. Dark magic screws with the mechanism the brain uses for such things, meaning that while the memories are there, the pony just doesn't know how to access them.
And partially, it's because of mental corruption caused by the magic. There's this book series I like called The Dresden Files, and in it, mind magic (which is illegal in that 'verse) inevitably causes psychic damage. In the Dresdenverse, this manifested as stuff like extreme paranoia, total insanity, and becoming a drooling vegetable (no wonder that stuff's illegal). However, this is Equestria, and the mental corruption is milder once the spell is no longer directly acting upon the pony in question, and it manifests as problems with memory.
However, that said, I really enjoyed this story and I think that the premise is fascinating. I want to read more about the adventures of Inspiration Manifestation Rarity, Love Poison Cheerilee and Big Mac, and Flutterbat.
5613403
What's TRULY annoying is that Trixie, since she's not a protagonist and they don't have as a priority worrying about alienating her to their buying audience, is ALLOWED to remember what she'd done while the Alicorn Amulet had its grip on her, where from a meta stand point, if she had been a PROTAGONIST, she wouldn't have remembered and the heroes would have just explained to her how evil she acted like they do every other time it's happened. The laws of magic themselves are bound by protagonist centered morality. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ProtagonistCenteredMorality
5613455
You really do have a good point and I agree with you (although I myself never really gave the matter much thought), but playing Devil's Advocate:
Trixie's case does seem different than the others, as she both does remember what she does under the influence and seems to suffer a sort of dark magic inertia, as she continues acting like she's got the Amulet on for a bit after she takes it off and puts on Twilight's Doorstop of (Fake) Power. Perhaps that was the Alicorn Amulet's version of 'Mind-magic Dizziness'.
Also, Trixie seemed to have lost a lot of time to the Alicorn Amulet, unlike Big Mac and Cheerilee who lost an hour and Rarity who lost a day. That might have had an effect on her memory.
Of course, if Trixie didn't remember what she did under the Amulet's influence, she probably wouldn't have been redeemed.
5614588
It just feels dumb that Rarity doesn't remember while Trixie did when they were the same brand of magic. (Corrupting the user the more they're used.)
5615069 what Cheerily, Big Mac, Fluttershy and Rarity experienced was a mind takeover. rarity's was only gradual.
Trixie, possibly Sombra, and Sunset Shimer (she demon) where "sufering" of power madness like someone on a drugs that augment your performence AND give you a feelling of power that outstretch what you can really do. and that going on a high goes like this
5889643
And where did that consciousness that was in control GO? If one believes in an afterlife.
5890029
When Dark World Dash/Nightmare Manacles was invited into Fauna Luster domain, she discovered the "lights of existence " were actually made of friendship. If Shadows and Memories are able to rediscover what that friendship truly means, doesn't that may turn them into " real"?
6040438
INTERESTING THEORY! http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WMG/PonyPOVSeries
For a moment, I thought Rarity was gonna live in despair forever...........Now I know she's in good hands and will have wonderful company.
7236447
Ironic isn't it?
5613455 Expect that didn't worked for the want it need spell, that Twilight caused, everyone remembered that.
Besides the difference is Trixie actually looked for the amulet, Rarity was given it, so she wasn't really aware what the spell was fully capable of. Trixie did, she was warned beforehand it was dangerous but toke it anyway.
7476121
I doubt it.
7476180 I wish I could see a sequel to this where those four have escaped and encountered the Main 6. They might all have to change there names though.
8010644
Sadly, I'm kinda DONE with sequels. If someone else wants to write it, they're free to.
Fascinating. And of all the stories to read after one involving Wallflower Blush...
One could argue that wanting to want counts. And they all certainly want those tasty, tasty memories...
In any case, leave it to a mind fragment empowered to make her dreams into reality to defy the place where dreams go to die. A wonderfully triumphant piece in the face of oblivion. Would you say the mis-marked members of the Mane Six circa "Magical Mystery Cure" are somewhere in this realm?
8862888
So you think they have no memory of what they did while their cutie marks were scrambled? I'll confess, the 'where am I?' cliche while under mind control is a berserk button for me, in particular that ISN'T how mind control actually works, unless you were explicitly given instructions not to remember, you would remember everything.
Thank you so much for the comment!