2017-08-25 [DMFA #1779] - Self aware river

[Famout]

Huh, it rather fits that Fae can be seen as a force of nature. I enjoy both the fact this seems to likely be a part of daddy dragons plot, and that Mab is (disturbingly) accepting of it. Near as I can tell she is just following though on the boon that was placed, otherwise she seems to have no care at all for Pyro.

Does make me wonder though, why does she like Dan? Or perhaps, why does she act like she enjoys being around him? And then the sadness about her friends fates... Does she only feel sorry for some and not others? Or is her reality filter also twisting her morality a bit?

Who knew god level immortal creatures could be so complex!

[PhycoKrusk]

Really wish we knew more about the wager. Specifically, what the win conditions are.

[MT Hazard]

Does make me wonder though, why does she like Dan? Or perhaps, why does she act like she enjoys being around him? And then the sadness about her friends fates... Does she only feel sorry for some and not others? Or is her reality filter also twisting her morality a bit?

Everyone is like that to some extent, they will care more about the death of one friend than a million strangers.

There is a theory called A dunbar number that there is a limit of people that we can have stable social relationships with, for humans that number is around 150. We don't know how many people Mab knows, if she exists in several realities simultaneously or if there is a vast difference between her thought processes and ours (although is quite likely). She could simply be unable or unwilling to care about that many people.

edit: used their instead of there.

[Tapewolf]

We don't know how many people Mab knows, if she exists in several realities simultaneously or if their is a vast difference between her thought processes and ours (although is quite likely). She could simply be unable or unwilling to care about that many people.

I read that as being the moral of the punchline - she's so alien, even to an apex Creature like Pyroduck, that her thought processes are only truly comprehensible to other Fae without special effort on her part.

e.g.  http://missmab.com/Comics/Vol_791.php

[Cassi-kun]

I like the callback to Mab's brownies.

Really wish we knew more about the wager. Specifically, what the win conditions are.

I get the feeling it's the Dragon-Cubi war. What interests me is Pip's motives, as he apparently is trying to get Abel killed (or at least get key players with no Boon hurt) and protect Jyrras, which may possibly be related to convincing Jyrras to build the "final weapon."

Or maybe he's just looking for excuses to eat phones.

[Jasonrevall]

I like that this is going into the psychology of the incredibly powerful immortals. Some of my favorite stories are how the heroes "outsmart" an overly powerful being (most of the time they probably are aware of what they're doing they're just convinced to do otherwise) without having to be the bestest most awesome fighter warriors in the whole world. The idea of dealing with beings beyond our comprehension (or at least our perspectives as mortal beings) that we can't match with force is something not touched on much anymore. Modern heroes would just punch it really really hard like Superman or Goku. It's mostly in books and old star trek episodes it seems or at the very least not often touched upon in modern popular media. Even Doctor Who made the doctor "blow it up!" style hero at one point don't know if it's gone back to the old roots or not. It's nice to see the possibility that the heroes can win through thought, intelligence, and philosophy rather than brute force.

Also at this point a discussion about the protagonist status of Mab in a story that has her name in it would be very interesting.

[Escher]

That was actually the moral dilemma I was thinking about when I first saw the last few strips.

What if instead of one of those death cult taurs, it'd been some hapless Being adventurers (or normal citizens) blackmailed or forced into the task? That might make things a little more dire on Pyro's end.

[The One Guy]

I feel like this is part of Mab's plot somehow.  While the explanations she gives seem to make a certain sort of sense, we do know that she does have some investment in what goes on here, namely her plan and wager with Pip and her five friends.  This means she cares more about the outcome of things than a force of mature, and notably seems to put her at odds with Hizell even beyond the whole faes hate dragons thing.  As such it seems out of place that she would be indifferent to Hizell using her.  I feel like the explanation she gives is an excuse (possibly even one she herself believes at the moment given her loss of knowledge when she leaves the fae realm) for furthering her plans.  My guess is she's trying to deliberately raise tensions and bring the war closer to starting.

[Howl]

Still a lot closer to a complete sociopath than a river, though.

Bluntly here, she cares more about playing her games than anything else. Her regard for her "friend"'s lives are imagined, they only matter because the rules say they matter. There's also the blunt hypocrisy that she gets mopey about them, and yet like I said before, obliterates somebody with all the concern that you'd have for a fly that flew into your neighbor's bug zapper when it would have been well within her power and taken about the same effort to just blip her somewhere else.

But, wouldn't be the first case someone in this comic displays sociopathic tendencies. Creatures in general tend to be prone to flagrant racism (Your race is weaker than mine, therefore it is inferior, Demons to Beings), so I guess that's just how the cookie crumbles.

Not that it's bad writing for a character to have the same amount of morality as a juice carton, though. It's only bad when it's not played on purpose. Mab's morality is supposed to be less "blue and orange" and more "incomprehensible color #1 and incomprehensible color #incomprehensible number", so this is more of a statement than any attempt at lodging a criticism.

Aren't y'all so glad I'm back?

[Jasonrevall]

I feel like this is part of Mab's plot somehow.  While the explanations she gives seem to make a certain sort of sense, we do know that she does have some investment in what goes on here, namely her plan and wager with Pip and her five friends.  This means she cares more about the outcome of things than a force of mature, and notably seems to put her at odds with Hizell even beyond the whole faes hate dragons thing.  As such it seems out of place that she would be indifferent to Hizell using her.  I feel like the explanation she gives is an excuse (possibly even one she herself believes at the moment given her loss of knowledge when she leaves the fae realm) for furthering her plans.  My guess is she's trying to deliberately raise tensions and bring the war closer to starting.

I think it may have more to do with the fact she has to have an act like this in the grand scheme of things. I had been wondering for awhile if this is how she has to act to help her friends or she makes things 1000 times worse for everyone by drawing attention to her actions. She appears to the other immortal interreality beings to be playing fae games. If she starts acting like she has an agenda beyond fae games they may come to see whats going on and I dont think Furrae could handle many more eldritch creatures from the void. So in reality this is just how they have to act. If they don't act like this things go wrong and it doesn't matter if the younger races know that, it's just how it is and they may agree or not it doesn't change anything.

So she acts like a predictable NPC in a video game that wont chase the player outside the aggro range of the inn so that other powerful entities don't go checking as to why she acted outside her original parameters they were expecting. Otherwise you get chimera at the inn investigating why this fae seems to be acting unfae like similar to a curious player in an MMO and we all know how much damage players can do to things for little to no reason.

Of course thats all theory and possibly a bit more complicated than that on the emotional level and I could be 100% incorrect but I like thinking about the background politics of these inter reality beings.

[The One Guy]

I feel like this is part of Mab's plot somehow.  While the explanations she gives seem to make a certain sort of sense, we do know that she does have some investment in what goes on here, namely her plan and wager with Pip and her five friends.  This means she cares more about the outcome of things than a force of mature, and notably seems to put her at odds with Hizell even beyond the whole faes hate dragons thing.  As such it seems out of place that she would be indifferent to Hizell using her.  I feel like the explanation she gives is an excuse (possibly even one she herself believes at the moment given her loss of knowledge when she leaves the fae realm) for furthering her plans.  My guess is she's trying to deliberately raise tensions and bring the war closer to starting.

I think it may have more to do with the fact she has to have an act like this in the grand scheme of things. I had been wondering for awhile if this is how she has to act to help her friends or she makes things 1000 times worse for everyone by drawing attention to her actions. She appears to the other immortal interreality beings to be playing fae games. If she starts acting like she has an agenda beyond fae games they may come to see whats going on and I dont think Furrae could handle many more eldritch creatures from the void. So in reality this is just how they have to act. If they don't act like this things go wrong and it doesn't matter if the younger races know that, it's just how it is and they may agree or not it doesn't change anything.

So she acts like a predictable NPC in a video game that wont chase the player outside the aggro range of the inn so that other powerful entities don't go checking as to why she acted outside her original parameters they were expecting. Otherwise you get chimera at the inn investigating why this fae seems to be acting unfae like similar to a curious player in an MMO and we all know how much damage players can do to things for little to no reason.

Of course thats all theory and possibly a bit more complicated than that on the emotional level and I could be 100% incorrect but I like thinking about the background politics of these inter reality beings.

While you have a point that she might be doing this to keep up her image, I doubt it has anything to do with other interdimensional beings.  It's been stated before that this is just a backwater reality that no one cares about, so that means A. they're not paying attention to this reality, B. they may not know the rules the fae have set for themselves in this reality, and C. even if A and B aren't true, they don't particularly care what sort of stunts she pulls in this reality anyway.  Furthermore, it has to be a known thing that fae try to do these kind of things, so Mab doing so would not be particularly noteworthy.

[Kuzma Volkov]

" If not, I may be able to sucker my husband or brother into making something which I am sure will not go horribly wrong in any way. "

And now I'm wondering what would happen in a cross over of Left over soup and dmfa... Would Max cause Wildy to run away or would it be cause for a Shatner fade to black? Would the group lose Simon as he leaves to join Abel and Jy? Would Halligan become a vegan? Would cubi cause lily's head to explode?

[e_voyager]

Oddly enough I have to agree with her. She does what she does because she wants to and that's how she does things. Should she excessively care if people are try to predict and make plans according to her? Now I think not.

[SteelWings]

In just a couple of comics Amber has shown us just how uncaring and utterly alien the Fae can be. beneath those friendly faces are utterly chilling creatures... brr.

[The One Guy]

It occurred to me that the fact that Hizell knew Mab would do this puts the conversation in 1775 in a new perspective.  The reason only one of them would survive no matter what was not because of some way Hizell could force the matter, such as the theorized remote-kill ability, but rather because taking a third option would just result in Mab killing her.

[Dracologist]

Why not just poof over and erase Hizell as well?  Why not start erasing anyone that could be considered a threat to the Inn?  Honestly, I hope that this becomes a major plot for the Inn and people where Mab slowly starts to become more and more of an enforcer that just deletes people she deems harmful to the Inn until the point where the heroes have to stop her from her rampage ending in her finally realizing what she's become and decides to reset herself into a new fae as they do at the end of their life cycle.  It can be a fierce and brutal storyline ending in a heart melting farewell at the end of it.

Edit:  Reading through the different opinions and people trying to justify the action with "We don't understand how Fae think so that makes it ok".  Sorry guys, but we should look at this logically based on her actions.

-Mab made a promise at some point to protect the Inn so when it became damaged she poofs back in and erases the cause from the existence.  She doesn't move the person, she doesn't kick her out, she just full on murders someone because she feels like it.
-She shows no remorse, no concern, and no emotions at all for what she did.  Honestly, she shows more emotion for the spear that she stole from her person she murdered than she did for the taur.  And it's all hidden under the false guise of "it's ok because we're not supposed to understand how fae think".
-She then has the nerve to try and justify that it was ok for her to murder someone because the person she killed attacked Pyroduck knowing that Mab would jump in and murder her.  I'm sorry, but no.
-Now in this comic she has the audacity to blame Pyroduck for not being ok with someone being murdered in front of him.

I'm sorry, but Mab is psychotic.  She has no empathy, no compassion, and that would be fine, if she didn't have the ability to reason, but she's showing right now that she does.  Look at him in that last panel (heck, look at him in the previous recent comics when she turns to look back at him).  He clearly doesn't like what she did and instead of finding a way to fix it she blames him and the victim for her actions.  Look at the guy, he's scared of her because if he says something she doesn't like then she could just do the same to him.  That's not friendship, not that she needs friends when she's actually judge, jury, AND executioner (not always in that order).

[Shakal]

Why not just poof over and erase Hizell as well?  Why not start erasing anyone that could be considered a threat to the Inn?  Honestly, I hope that this becomes a major plot for the Inn and people where Mab slowly starts to become more and more of an enforcer that just deletes people she deems harmful to the Inn until the point where the heroes have to stop her from her rampage ending in her finally realizing what she's become and decides to reset herself into a new fae as they do at the end of their life cycle.  It can be a fierce and brutal storyline ending in a heart melting farewell at the end of it.

Edit:  Reading through the different opinions and people trying to justify the action with "We don't understand how Fae think so that makes it ok".  Sorry guys, but we should look at this logically based on her actions.

-Mab made a promise at some point to protect the Inn so when it became damaged she poofs back in and erases the cause from the existence.  She doesn't move the person, she doesn't kick her out, she just full on murders someone because she feels like it.
-She shows no remorse, no concern, and no emotions at all for what she did.  Honestly, she shows more emotion for the spear that she stole from her person she murdered than she did for the taur.  And it's all hidden under the false guise of "it's ok because we're not supposed to understand how fae think".
-She then has the nerve to try and justify that it was ok for her to murder someone because the person she killed attacked Pyroduck knowing that Mab would jump in and murder her.  I'm sorry, but no.
-Now in this comic she has the audacity to blame Pyroduck for not being ok with someone being murdered in front of him.

I'm sorry, but Mab is psychotic.  She has no empathy, no compassion, and that would be fine, if she didn't have the ability to reason, but she's showing right now that she does.  Look at him in that last panel (heck, look at him in the previous recent comics when she turns to look back at him).  He clearly doesn't like what she did and instead of finding a way to fix it she blames him and the victim for her actions.  Look at the guy, he's scared of her because if he says something she doesn't like then she could just do the same to him.  That's not friendship, not that she needs friends when she's actually judge, jury, AND executioner (not always in that order).

I don't remember which exact strip it was, but as Mab put it to Albion: "It'd be a sucky revolution if I do all the work for them."

[Dracologist]

I don't remember which exact strip it was, but as Mab put it to Albion: "It'd be a sucky revolution if I do all the work for them."

But isn't that just another kind of problem?  She claims that these people are her friends, but is willing to alter things and even remove people from the board all together if it means making the show more interesting for herself.  How long is it going to be before she removes Alexi, or Dan to make the entertainment for action packed for herself?  If all she cares about is herself then the only people that are really her "friends" are the people she hasn't wronged yet.  Think about it this way.  How would Dan have reacted if he had been here instead of Pyroduck and Mab did this?  Dan is your atypical "good" hero, if he thinks it's wrong then it probably is.

[Shakal]

It all depends on who's perspective you're looking at this from. As is being pointed out, Fae are essentially immortal (can choose to 'recycle' themselves but only at their own choosing and timing), omnipotent beings. Compared to that any mortal is a fleeting, inconsequential blip in reality.

Looking at it from that perspective, I have felt emotionally attached to characters in video games I have played, but that's never made me keep my computer/console perpetually on with the game running because I didn't want to "kill" those characters when I turned the system off.

[Dracologist]

But you understand that the there's no actual reality to a computer game.  The characters in a game function and act as they're programmed to, there's no free will, no mentality, no independent thought.  A character isn't a person, so having an immortal look on at a reality like the people living in it don't actually exist is entirely wrong.  If you're looking at it from Pyroduck's perspective then Mab just murdered someone in front of him and then blames the victim, blames him, and all around acts like what she does is ok because she says it's ok.  If you look at it from Mab's perspective, she knew that there were other options to take and decided to kill someone anyway for literally no reason.  You can even look at it from the taur's perspective because she was murdered.

Being immortal doesn't mean much because all it means is that she won't die (unless she wants to).  People are a blink of an eye to her existence, but time still travels at the same speed.  A year for Pyroduck is still a year for Mab which is plenty of times to build relationships, learn right from wrong, and develop empathy for other living creatures.  Living until you decide not to doesn't mean that other lives simply don't matter anymore.

[The One Guy]

I feel the better analogy is that of nonhuman animals rather than computer games.  If we have a rat problem in our house, we might set out rat poison to kill them despite the fact that it might be more "humane" to capture them and set them free elsewhere.  At the same time, it's not unheard of for someone to have a rat for a pet that they care for and love.  The fae's views on mortals could be seen as similar.  It's not a perfect analogy, as they seem capable of making friends on a more equal level than an pet/owner level (I do believe Mab does truly care about her five friends, and possibly others, Pyro included), but the same idea of them being lesser beings that they don't care so much about still applies.  Extending the analogy further, wanting what's best for a world is like wanting to preserve your favorite nature reserve; and if you happen to kill a deer in the process, who cares?  I'm not saying this attitude is necessarily morally right, but it does seem to be how they view things.

As for why she doesn't just fix the problem by just zapping away Hizell like she did this girl, think of it this way:  If you had the power to solve all the world's problems would you?  Before you say yes, consider a few things:  First of all, by removing all challenge, you're removing all motivation of everyone to better themselves, as well as any ambition and meaning in anyone's lives.  You'd be removing all desire to do good, because doing good would not be necessary.  And secondly, think of all the criminals and evil people.  In order to magically get them to stop doing bad things, you would have to change who they are, essentially brainwashing them and removing all their independence and free will.  And if you're one to say that's ok because they're evil anyway, what about your average person?  No one is perfect, so to make a "perfect" world, everyone would need to be brainwashed and controlled at least a little.  And for that matter, who are you to say what is "perfect?"  Doesn't look so appealing anymore, does it.  And since fae are beings of chaos, this would seem especially unappealing to them (I would be surprised if this is closer to the modus operandi of how dragons rule over worlds).  So you don't want to just fix everything, yet you still want to help.  Where do you draw the line?  No matter what you do, you could be doing much more, but if you do too much, you're denying people their freedom and identity.  In a way that's the beauty of the fae placing restrictions upon themselves for how they must act within each world, it allows them to work toward their goals in that world without simply taking control and depriving the world of it's chaos and freedom.

That ... was mostly a long train of though made up as I wrote it, but I hope I got my point across at least.

[Dracologist]

If you have a rat problem then you don't befriend the rats.  Rats don't talk or communicate in a way that we understand.  The difference between higher intelligent beings and animals is social abilities.  Removing vermin is done to help limit and prevent disease and pests (like fleas), but when a creature can speak, reason, and understand suddenly there are more options than just kill or release.  If Mab saw the people of the realm in this way then she wouldn't make friends with them to begin with.

Secondly, you can't create a strawman suggesting some perfect existence and then put it on me like i was suggesting that to begin with.  I wasn't even suggesting that she rewrites people to change them.  My only suggestion is that in story she could easily go after Hizell to remove him due to his attack on the Inn and how out of story it makes her a far too powerful character because any threat that the team might come up against can be dealt with instantly by Mab.  There's no need for character development, no need for advancement, no need for struggles or pain or loss because Mab can resolve any problem in an instant.  If Dan gets really badly hurt during a fight will he die?  Probably not, Mab can fix him up instantly, but more importantly why have him go into a situation where he can get hurt to begin with when he can just ask Mab to go and poof someone out of existence?  The fact that Mab exists like this now proves negates any kind of tension or struggle any character can come across because they have a deity level friend.  Any story where the protagonist is vastly more powerful than the villains is going to become instantly boring.

The other part of my suggestion on her removing Hizell is that she won't due to wanting to be entertained by the battle that should ensue from it meaning that she has the power to stop the suffering of people before the threat an really become a threat and chooses not to.  That makes her incredibly evil.

This is actually the entire problem with introducing the idea that a character can impartially kill villains and minions without effort.  It creates the question, "Why doesn't she just do that all the time?" Which really only has two actual answers to it.  Either 1) She's aware of all the evil going on in the word and simply doesn't care enough to stop it (which means she's incompassionate to the pain other people go through that she could stop in an instant), or 2) She's unaware of the suffering of others in a land and time of easy access information which makes her bubbly at best and irresponsible at worst.  Of course, if what I'm told about her being omnipotent is correct then 2 isn't even an actual option.

[Tapewolf]

or 2) She's unaware of the suffering of others in a land and time of easy access information which makes her bubbly at best and irresponsible at worst.  Of course, if what I'm told about her being omnipotent is correct then 2 isn't even an actual option.

Remember that Mab is unable to use her omniscience outside Fae Realms, while Pip is omniscient but powerless.  In Pip's case it's a curse - it has been assumed that Mab was deliberately restricting herself as some kind of Fae game - of which they are apparently quite fond - but Amber once hinted that she might be compelled into it in a similar manner to Pip.

It's also worth mentioning that Mab said "It would be a sucky revolution if I did all the work" at one point.  (p1029)

[Dracologist]

Remember that Mab is unable to use her omniscience outside Fae Realms, while Pip is omniscient but powerless.  In Pip's case it's a curse - it has been assumed that Mab was deliberately restricting herself as some kind of Fae game - of which they are apparently quite fond - but Amber once hinted that she might be compelled into it in a similar manner to Pip.

It's also worth mentioning that Mab said "It would be a sucky revolution if I did all the work" at one point.  (p1029)

What kind of restrictions can she possibly have on her that still allows her to murder someone by removing them from existence all together?  And as for her not wanting to do all of the work on the revolution, that just proves that she's there for the sake of being entertained by the conflicts of others, but if a chess piece moves in a way that she doesn't like then she reserves the power to just remove it from the board entirely.  She can't be an outside spectator AND a player, it's one or the other.

My bigger complaint about it is far less to do with the morality and actions of the character, but vastly more to do with what it means for stories now.  Mab is basically a god with full god abilities.  There's no longer a threat that the characters can't overcome because Mab exists.  The point of a story is that the protagonists must work to overcome a challenge of some kind meaning that the challenge has to be.... well... a challenge, but Mab existing means that they're playing on super easy mode now because there isn't a single thing on that planet that will ever be more powerful than Mab is.  The best thing to do now is to try and slowly corrupt Mab into being a villain, but even then they'll never face anything greater than her even if they win so the comic is kind of over at that point.

[Merlin]

Yeah, but Mab's got one particular focus right now. She certainly didn't assist Abel in his recent... mangling

[Alondro]

Modern heroes would just punch it really really hard like Superman or Goku.

Dude!  How could you make a notation like that and forget the ULTIMATE one-punch hero, Saitama! 

He is the penultimate evolution of the archetype! 

[Alondro]

I feel like this is part of Mab's plot somehow.  While the explanations she gives seem to make a certain sort of sense, we do know that she does have some investment in what goes on here, namely her plan and wager with Pip and her five friends.  This means she cares more about the outcome of things than a force of mature, and notably seems to put her at odds with Hizell even beyond the whole faes hate dragons thing.  As such it seems out of place that she would be indifferent to Hizell using her.  I feel like the explanation she gives is an excuse (possibly even one she herself believes at the moment given her loss of knowledge when she leaves the fae realm) for furthering her plans.  My guess is she's trying to deliberately raise tensions and bring the war closer to starting.

I think it may have more to do with the fact she has to have an act like this in the grand scheme of things. I had been wondering for awhile if this is how she has to act to help her friends or she makes things 1000 times worse for everyone by drawing attention to her actions. She appears to the other immortal interreality beings to be playing fae games. If she starts acting like she has an agenda beyond fae games they may come to see whats going on and I dont think Furrae could handle many more eldritch creatures from the void. So in reality this is just how they have to act. If they don't act like this things go wrong and it doesn't matter if the younger races know that, it's just how it is and they may agree or not it doesn't change anything.

So she acts like a predictable NPC in a video game that wont chase the player outside the aggro range of the inn so that other powerful entities don't go checking as to why she acted outside her original parameters they were expecting. Otherwise you get chimera at the inn investigating why this fae seems to be acting unfae like similar to a curious player in an MMO and we all know how much damage players can do to things for little to no reason.

Of course thats all theory and possibly a bit more complicated than that on the emotional level and I could be 100% incorrect but I like thinking about the background politics of these inter reality beings.

While you have a point that she might be doing this to keep up her image, I doubt it has anything to do with other interdimensional beings.  It's been stated before that this is just a backwater reality that no one cares about, so that means A. they're not paying attention to this reality, B. they may not know the rules the fae have set for themselves in this reality, and C. even if A and B aren't true, they don't particularly care what sort of stunts she pulls in this reality anyway.  Furthermore, it has to be a known thing that fae try to do these kind of things, so Mab doing so would not be particularly noteworthy.

A backwater reality no one cares about... funny thing that.  It's in such places in fiction from which great heroes and universe-changing events usually rise.  The backwater slums of a dystopian futuer, a primitive world upon which crashes a tailed boy raised by a monk, a small town of hobbits, a wretched hive of scum and villainy... from such places are the great movers shaped in fantasy.  Those of us who are genre-savvy know this trope quite well indeed, and expect interesting things to come of it.

[The One Guy]

If you have a rat problem then you don't befriend the rats.  Rats don't talk or communicate in a way that we understand.  The difference between higher intelligent beings and animals is social abilities.  Removing vermin is done to help limit and prevent disease and pests (like fleas), but when a creature can speak, reason, and understand suddenly there are more options than just kill or release.  If Mab saw the people of the realm in this way then she wouldn't make friends with them to begin with.

Again, I must point out that I am not saying it's right, I'm just explaining the way fae think.  Though I should point out that despite the moral issues with thinking that way, it doesn't make Mab a villain or antagonist.

Secondly, you can't create a strawman suggesting some perfect existence and then put it on me like i was suggesting that to begin with.  I wasn't even suggesting that she rewrites people to change them.  My only suggestion is that in story she could easily go after Hizell to remove him due to his attack on the Inn and how out of story it makes her a far too powerful character because any threat that the team might come up against can be dealt with instantly by Mab.  There's no need for character development, no need for advancement, no need for struggles or pain or loss because Mab can resolve any problem in an instant.  If Dan gets really badly hurt during a fight will he die?  Probably not, Mab can fix him up instantly, but more importantly why have him go into a situation where he can get hurt to begin with when he can just ask Mab to go and poof someone out of existence?  The fact that Mab exists like this now proves negates any kind of tension or struggle any character can come across because they have a deity level friend.  Any story where the protagonist is vastly more powerful than the villains is going to become instantly boring.

I wasn't creating a strawman, I was providing an extreme example to illustrate a mentality that is still relevant even in more ambiguous scenarios.  Besides, you called my rant about creating a perfect world a strawman, only to go right on to describe how Mab can make a perfect world for her friends.  While perhaps not to the extreme of the outright brainwashing I mentioned in my rant, you're still describing a situation where she eliminates all challenge and removes the freedom of the world to deal with its problems in its own way.  You mention character development from a story standpoint, but real people experience character development in a way, it's called learning from your experiences and maturing.  This provides adequate in-universe reasoning for fay not to just fix everything as you describe.

[Dracologist]

You misunderstand then.  I'm not saying that Mab should create the perfect world for her friends, I'm saying that she could and explaining how that's a problem for any form of story-telling.  It's a complaint in the narrative of the situation not just the situation itself.  Mab now exists as a deity with the power to do just about anything that she wants so now any plot that Amber puts out is just a shrug because if things go wrong then Mab can slap her fingers or wiggle her nose (I Dream of Genie reference) and suddenly the problem is gone.  When there's no longer a plot to a story that the protagonists can't overcome instantly there suddenly isn't a story at all.  There either needs to be repercussions for what she did leading her to never do it again, or it needs to be explained that this one event is far out of character for her and she isn't ok with what she felt she needed to do.  OR Amber could just slowly have Mab turn into a villain for a later time leaving the protagonists to have to deal with her.

[The One Guy]

But from a storytelling perspective, isn't that what the limitations she places on herself are doing?  The rules and restrictions that the fae place upon themselves within this world (and perhaps the additional rules due to the whatever she's doing with Pip) are exactly what prevents her from being an OP character that ruins the story despite being technically capable of doing so.