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Well, considering my wife and I don't define ourselves by one part of who we are, add the fact that we aren't 24/7 nor do we want to be, plus we dont feel any urge or compulsion to engage in public displays, mix in that we aren't looking for play partners and don't have any desire to see others in diapers, add the fact that we can buy pretty much any product or accessory we want online and the result is that for us an "ABDL" city doesn't really appeal. That being said I couldn't see us moving to any kind of "specific group community". It just feels too limiting in terms of getting the chance to live a life with a broad variety of life experiences which is what we want. Each to their own though, I'm sure it would feel like a paradise to some Snugglebear

This from a google search (wiki entry):

People that have no expertise in an area often get a platform because they are famous, not because they have any great insights. Vaccinations are the great leveler of society, where all get an opportunity to grow and develop without the fear of dying young.

A good point. I think it is time to write the foreword - let's call it a midword. The underlying themes are the family's fatalistic assumption that their children will always remain incontinent until puberty, and then dry up. This has been backed by experience running through the generations. This is reinforced by an overly strong sense of discipline resulting from their service tradition. Children are simply told that they are going to dry up at that stage, and not to remove their nappies in the meantime. Parents accept that the children will be wet, and that the simpler solution is just to nappy them and avoid accidents and scenes. The story is really one of questioning this assumption, of empowerment and revolt. Juliet hits rock bottom when, acutely depressed, she sits by the pond, dabbles her feet in the water, and wets her nappy out of sheer misery. It is the arrival of Peter, as a deus-ex-machina that shakes her out of her self-pity and kindles her own self-awareness, and forces her final spectacular revolt. The long forgotten strap hanging on the back of the nursery door represents the fatalistic acceptance and the excessive discipline; she revolted once before, got it wrong, was savagely punished, and the repression was reinforced every time the nursery door closed and the strap slapped against it. Juliet found it easier to play along with the system and wet herself rather than risk the strap again. Gran had long since forgotten all about it, and was caught by surprise when Juliet finally snapped. Juliet's personal demon represents her subdued feelings rising to the surface like a volcanic eruption and forcing her to take control of her life. For the fun of it, I wrapped it around the coming of age and a pretty romance, and added a few characters to make it flow. Some of the incentive came from the Fritzl case, which affected me deeply; I wanted to write about a young girl breaking free of her confinement. Like the characters, the story really wrote itself. Juliet was originally a picture of a young girl in a nappy, speaking on the phone, and the original "egg" story was really an expanded caption. It "just growed" like Topsy.I wondered what she would be saying. I carried over her serious, concentrated expression and apparent intelligence into the rather straight, responsible, serious Juliet. The greatest fun in writing is developing the characters; starting with a stick-figure and fleshing them out until, as in the old cliche, they start writing themselves. You just know how that person would react in that situation. Gran developed from an old-fashioned tyrant into a proper old-fashioned Gran. Granpa was originally put in to explain why she lived in the big old house, and why he was absent from "Egg" - he was on duty, or even at sea, which made a a seaman or serviceman. Working out why he was still there at what must have been nearly sixty years, he had to be a senior officer, of flag rank. All the others would have retired by then. This would give him some problems re-adjusting to civilian life and idle retirement, which explains his rather gruff and dictatorial nature, and the rest of the family pulling his leg about it. The family's language is still laced with nautical terms, as you will have seen. The "long naval tradition" is a good peg on which to hang the excessive discipline, and the inherited wealth of the family allows a generous stage setting, with a large, old fashioned nursery, lots of bedrooms, large garden, pond, commodious kitchen & laundry etc.. "Pembroke" is Gran's family home, sited somewhere around Woburn/Woburn Sands/Aspley Guise area, near Milton Keynes, a score of miles from Whipsnade Zoo and Ashridge Forest, and the safari park is within Woburn Abbey estate. (Peter and Juliet went to school at Bedford, and Juliet went on to Bristol University, to be within striking distance of Dartmouth. I don't know what she studied. Any suggestions? Nothing too clever - I don't want her to be intimidating!) This explains why the Admiral lives so far from the sea; Gran had the money and the house, and backed him all the way through his career. The setting is twenty or thirty years ago, just when disposable nappies, nasty, leaky, and non-resealable were just coming in, and not approved by the traditionalist Gran. It also frees me from having to include mobile phones and emails, which simplifies the interaction of the characters. Gran has another side to her. She has kept her man loyal and content for nearly fifty years by making sure he is thoroughly screwed whenever he gets leave. She has never had a "headache" in her life, and her management of Juliet involves training her in how to manage a sailor - such as the remark about it taking three days to get the smell of the submarine out of the submariner when he comes home on leave. She managed to set up the house-sitting episode for Juliet by pulling every string in the book, and managed to do so without Juliet realising what was being done for her. Amelia started as Juliet's "bete noir" and general ball-and-chain, a convenient excuse for bracketing her with the infant for purpose of feeding, bedding, changing and general abuse. Noxious, utterly self centred, spoilt, demanding, she acts as a foil for Juliet's every attempt to escape her predicament. (I modelled her on a particularly unpleasant aquaintance). In the way of things, she has outgrown the stick figure and now writes herself. She has had the good fortune of an older sister to act as a role-model and as a protector. She is actually a much stronger, wilder character than Juliet, a bit of a tomboy, and has inherited a larger share of the warrior genes that probably stem from generations of pirates/naval warriors. We will see a lot more of her. The present story is mostly written, and is being padded out and polished. It will cover the period up to Juliet's wedding to Peter, and her facing the choice of career or motherhood. The purpose of Vickie is to get Juliet to take up arms once again (this is really an anti-diaper tale, as you have probably realised) and to start to see both sides of the mother-child discipline problem, and perhaps in a future episode I will draw it round in a full circle. It has been a fascinating mental exercise for me in trying to get inside the head of a young woman - I hope I have not made too many obvious mistakes. It has been written especially for this peculiar market, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it.