A floating timeline (also known as a sliding timescale)[1] is a device used in fiction, particularly in long-running comics and animation, to explain why characters age little or not at all while the setting around them remains contemporary to the real world. The term is used in the comics community to refer to series that take place in a "continuous present".[2] Floating timelines are also used when creators do not need or want their characters to age, typically in children's books and animated television shows.[3]
^Kaveney, Roz (2008). Superheroes!: Capes and Crusaders in Comics and Films. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 22. ISBN 9781845115692.
^Jeffery, Scott (2016), Jeffery, Scott (ed.), "The Rhizome of Comic Book Culture", The Posthuman Body in Superhero Comics: Human, Superhuman, Transhuman, Post/Human, Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels, New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, pp. 37–67, doi:10.1057/978-1-137-54950-1_3, ISBN 978-1-137-54950-1
^Goertz, Allie; Prescott, Julia; Oakley, Bill; Weinstein, Josh (2018-09-18). 100 Things The Simpsons Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die. Triumph Books. ISBN 978-1-64125-109-9.
A floatingtimeline (also known as a sliding timescale) is a device used in fiction, particularly in long-running comics and animation, to explain why...
or birthdays passing, the characters never age. The series uses a floatingtimeline in which episodes generally take place in the year the episode is...
otherwise." Charlie Brown is eight years old for most of the strip's floatingtimeline. Initially, he suggests he lives in an apartment, with his grandmother...
was like as a child. Ash has been criticized for being stuck in a 'floatingtimeline', as well as for his long-lasting inability to win many major Pokémon...
awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The Simpsons uses a floatingtimeline (the characters do not physically age), and as such the show is generally...
without any mention of his regular employment. The Simpsons uses a floatingtimeline in which the characters never physically age, and, as such, the show...
series of 14 episodes premiered on 21 May 1995, and began following a floatingtimeline, with the students established as being in their last school year...
backdoor to take control of the android. By the 1980s (modern-day; floatingtimeline), now presenting as his own grandson Victor Timely III, Timely Industries'...
semester in the years it aired. Writers have been able to use a semi-floatingtimeline, so that the issues depicted are modern for their viewers. This season...
use of the "floatingtimeline" plot device, which can be considered as a tradition in fictional universes. The lack of a floatingtimeline was likely decided...
currently on death row in the state penitentiary. The series uses a floatingtimeline, meaning it is always taking place in the current year, and Fred is...
term of the Spring semester. Writers have been able to use a semi-floatingtimeline, so that the issues depicted are modern for their viewers. This season...
characters', transfers to the fourth and remains as such due to the floatingtimeline of the series. In the future, beginning with the film South Park:...
written have to be updated every few years to "make sense" in this floatingtimeline. Thus, the events of previous stories are considered to have happened...
timeline since season six, season twelve is set in the spring semester in the years it aired. Writers have been able to use a semi-floatingtimeline,...
semester, in which the years it aired. Writers were able to use a semi-floatingtimeline, so that the issues depicted are modern for their viewers. This season...
to time passed between events in the series. The stories follow a floatingtimeline, with each story being set at the time it was written, while the characters...
she was later retconned as Peggy's grandniece to reflect Marvel's floatingtimeline. In comics published in the 1980s, Rogers dated and became engaged...
1967 hit solo record "Can't Take My Eyes Off You." Television portal Floatingtimeline Clayton-Millar, Kim (April 24, 2006). "Soaps' rising stars". Tonight...
of the winter semester in the years it aired. Writers used a semi-floatingtimeline, so that the issues depicted were modern for their viewers. The first...
as taking place in "real time" but presumably operates on the same floatingtimeline as DC Comics stories in general. The series follows the success of...
audiences could understand them. The events of Still Game take place in a floatingtimeline where the characters remain the same age from series to series. One...
retconned elements of his backstory so that he exists on something of a floatingtimeline. In his initial appearance in 1961's Call for the Dead, Smiley is...
Season 21, it is revealed that he is 1/64th black. The Simpsons uses a floatingtimeline in which the characters do not age or age very little, and as such...
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