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.
[5] The long-running animated television series The Simpsons uses a floating timeline; episodes showing the early lives of Marge and Homer have been set in both the 1970s and the 1990s, and the characters do not age despite society and technology changing around them.
Chief director Kunihiko Yuyama has said that protagonist Ash Ketchum is eternally ten years old, and that time has not passed since the beginning of his journey.
[6] The Nickelodeon television series The Fairly OddParents subverts the concept of a floating timeline in the episode "Timmy's Secret Wish!
A noteworthy exception to the floating timeline trope is the comic strip Luann, where characters age approximately one month for every real-world year.
Author P. G. Wodehouse set his comedic Jeeves series, about English gentleman Bertie Wooster and his valet, when they were written, though the characters age little or not at all.
Author Anthony Horowitz has said that he didn't want to "lose the innocence of the character",[12] and that it was important for Alex to remain young because the plots required him to play the part of an unassuming child spy.