Floating timeline

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.

[Kaveney-1] Kaveney, Roz (2008). Superheroes!: Capes and Crusaders in Comics and Films. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 22. ISBN 9781845115692.

[2] 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-3] 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.

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