The Zeroth Law of Valerie Warzone.

As we know, Val Stone has picked up the baton of failure, selfishness and stupidity that is the logical fallacy called "the appeal to worse problems" argument. Since she's a self-absorbed whack-job with the same martyrdom complex Elly Patterson has and the same lack of give her idol does, her favourite means of silencing children who try to get her to worry about things she'd rather not because of a genetic proclivity to tune out the unimportant buzzing noises children make so she can focus on her own self-pity and inability to admit that the reason people at her job dump stuff on her desk is because she fucking lets them is to berate them for being terrible people because they worry about things that they can do things about instead of things that they cannot. I distinctly remember Holly flat out telling Val that yes, she knows that these problems exist but there's not much that a small child in a suburb can actually do to make things better so could she please perhaps help her to figure out how to deal with the anorectic bloviating that her mommy doesn't love her because she's not her birth weight only to be stared at in blank-eyed and sorrowing incomprehension.

This is because the sort of person who loves to lecture about how their are children starving in Africa so I can't care about your problems holds the following untenable assumptions to be self-evident.

1. "It is not possible to care about big and small problems simultaneously." This is horseshit because a Holly can be aware that there's a Great Big Problem she can't do much about no matter how much she might actually want to and a Tiny Little Problem that would go away on its own if Mom would get off her high horse and help her with it.
2. "Venting a minor complaint is sufficient proof that the major problem is considered unimportant." This is a load of crap because of the reason I mentioned above.
3. "If the person irritated over the minor problem did help solve or even cared about the big problems, s/he would then not mind at all that his/her car broke down or whatever the frustration was...or because there are people with worse problems, that person shouldn't complain about a frustration" This is simply an excuse people who are too lazy and selfish to care about the people in their immediate vicinity use to keep from having to do so.

The reason that I mention this is that there's a hidden postulate that is so obvious, people don't mention it. Science fiction author Isaac Asimov once referred to something like that as a sort of zeroth law because of its unspoken nature. What seems to underpin the need to bellow about starving orphan refugees in war zones dying of world diseases is something along the lines of

"0: "By invoking insoluble problems, the unsympathetic drone trying her damnedest to avoid caring about her child can hoodwink herself into thinking of herself as a paragon of virtue instead of as what she is: a cold-hearted solipsist sick with the mortal sin of Sloth."

The Stone Isolation Perplex.

Another irritating commonality that Stone Soup and FBorFW share is that there aren't nearly enough characters. We have Valerie, we have her new husband Phil the motorcycle cop, we have her daughters Monster Teenager Who Is Sat On Because She Reminds Val Of Who She Used To Be (Holly) and Favourite Who Reminds Her Of Her First Huaband So She Gets Away With Murder (Alix), we have her dozy kid sister Joan, her second husband Wally, Wally's nephew Andy, Joan's son from her first husband Max, Joan's daughter with Wally, Lucy, Val and Joan's mother, Evie The Voluntourist and her enabler Arnold and also the cartoon dog Biscuit.

What we don't see in all of that is any sort of friend or hobby for Holly or Alix that might lead them outside the home. Most, if not all kids their age have a pal they can share things with or a place they can go when it gets to be too much at home. Not Holly. Not Alix. What Eliot forgets or ignores in her haste to pare down the cast is that it makes Val look as if she can't or won't trust her daughters and doesn't want someone trying to 'undermine' Valerie's authority by offering a perspective that isn't "You'll thank me later for all the shit I pull now when you don't go through the horrible things I did because I'm stupid enough to think that if I prevent you from having character-building failures in your future, you can actually function in society because I'm the sort of dope who could carry a branch in her arms and try to argue people into agreeing that I'm a mighty oak tree."