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{{trope|wppage=Floating timeline}}
{{quote|''"That's right folks! Batman was twenty years old when he started out! Nowadays he's -- uh --three-orty? Ish?"''
|'''Linkara''', ''[[Atop the Fourth Wall]]'' reviewing the origin comic of Batman from the early 1940s}}
Also known as Sliding Time Scale.
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The problem is this. On one hand, [[Superman]] is a high-selling, successful character with a lot of licenses and so on based off of him. You don't want him to age or die, because that means losing that successful character. On the other hand, Superman exists as part of a greater universe, and if ''all'' the stories in that universe are continuously frozen in time, that cuts off a lot of possibilities.
So what do you do? [[Comic Book Time]]. You use the ''illusion'' of time passing. You never refer to specific dates if you can help it, and you let characters change, but only a little.
This can prove harmful to characters that are tied to a certain time period. For example, [[X-Men (Comic Book)|Magneto]]'s backstory involves being in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. This causes a particular type of aversion, the [[Refugee From Time]] where you just don't allow any Sliding Time Scale at all or at least not for one character.
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Another factor of Comic Book Time is that it does not pass at the same rate for everyone; secondary characters may catch [[Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome]] and age from children to teenagers and then young adults while their adult counterparts remain roughly the same age. Or minor characters can drop out of the narrative, only to return years later, aged, while their counterpart heroes remain youthful. This concept was picked up on in the [[Fourth Wall]]-breaking ''She-Hulk'' series, in which a [[The Golden Age of Comic Books|Golden Age]] character decided to hang around She-Hulk as much as possible to stay youthful.
Stories focused around youngsters
One possible justification is that publication time does not equal the passage of time in the book. Particularly in recent years, comic book publishers have tended to adopt a model where each monthly issue of the book in question is a single instalment of a longer story-arc; for instance, a six-issue story arc where [[Batman]] takes on the Joker may only equal one night in the actual passage of time. Despite this, the story has taken up half a year of "real time". This, naturally, is going to affect both how quickly you can develop the overall narrative and how contemporary you can make it. However, all characters in a universe tend to inhabit the same "present", despite when they first appeared or how much time has passed in their series.
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Stories that take place in the future, naturally, are allowed to completely ignore this—unless the same future is referenced again later, in which case it'll have slid forward the same amount.
Compare [[Frozen in Time]], [[Webcomic Time]], [[Talking Is a Free Action
{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==▼
* After over 15 years of ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'', Ash is (according to the official Japanese site) ''still'' 10 years old. On a 1:1 basis, he'd be 25 as of 2012. To be fair though, this would make his friendship with Dawn (who debuts nine years into the show at age 10) incredibly awkward... To make things even worse, they've acknowledged that a year or more has passed more than once; apparently, time passes but nobody ages.▼
** And just to drive the point home, the dub has Meowth telling Dawn in their first meeting that "We've been chasing Pikachu since you've been alive."▼
*** Given Team Rocket's status as local [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|fourth-wall breakers]] who have explicitly referred to the show's staff in the past, Meowth's in a pretty good position to be referring to ''actual production time'' that nobody else in the cast would know about.▼
** For the record, the ''[[Pokémon Special]]'' manga (which follows a plot closer to the video games) does not follow this trope; there are numerous [[Time Skip|timeskips]], and save when characters are drawn chibi, every character ages correctly.▼
*** Of [[Incredibly Lame Pun|special]] note is Red. Like Ash, he starts his quest at the age of 10, but near the end of the FireRed/LeafGreen arc [[Shirtless Scene|you can really appreciate that he is now 16]]. [[Stupid Sexy Flanders|Like, ''really'' notice it]].▼
** Other manga do not follow ''Special'' though. The protagonists stay the same age no matter how long it is. Even the ''second'' [[Pocket Monsters (manga)|adaptation]], and the longest airing one, follows this. It follows a similar plot to the anime (despite being five months older), with the protagonist going various regions with his Pikachu.▼
* ''[[Detective Conan]]'' is a more extreme case, as it frequently references the current time of year, with some holidays celebrated more than once, yet after 12 years of episodes, Conan is still in the first grade. A clear example can be seen during the time Conan is investigating Eisuke Hondou; the "Shadow of the Black Organization" arc combines two cases that take place at [[Japanese Holidays|New Years and Setsuban]] respectively, while his disappearance in the next plot arc happens at the end of December. The latter arc keeps things vague by referring to an event that happened a few hundred episodes before Eisuke Hondou even appeared as "several months ago". Granted, this is necessary to the whole point of the series; if Conan aged in real time, he would be older than he was before the de-aging.▼
** As an update to the above, it would now be 14 years in the anime, 16 in the manga. [[Word of God]] even confirms that it is Comic Book Time. Most fans assume that only the episodes relevant to the main plot are actually happening, and maybe a few other episodes important to character development.▼
* While the first three shows in the ''[[Pretty Cure]]'' franchise aged characters in real time, ''[[Yes! Pretty Cure 5]]'' has instead made use of Comic Book Time—all the characters are the same age now as they were in February 2007, despite clearly going through summer and Christmas. Part of this is may be because Karen and Komachi are in their last year of middle school.▼
* Likewise, the ''[[Ouran High School Host Club]]'' anime has Honey alluding to graduating from high school next year. Since the manga is still ongoing, the author tells us not to worry about stuff like that.▼
** The manga explicitly ignores the passage of time, except to give seasonal settings, keeping all the characters in the same year as when they started. However, {{spoiler|it's been averted since they've finally graduated}}.▼
* [[Fan Wank|Serious discussion]] on whether the goddesses in ''[[Ah! My Goddess]]'' age mostly glosses over the fact that the manga has been running [[Print Long Runners|for 20 years]]; aside from [[Art Evolution]] and the characters [[Character Development|learning and doing new things]], nowhere ''near'' that much time has passed for them.▼
* [[Lampshaded]] in ''[[One Piece]]'''s letter column, where the author explains that "The characters have their birthdays every year, but they turn the same age every time, those lucky bastards."▼
** And yet somehow Coby became [[Bishonen|noticeably]] older when he reappeared. The author claimed [[Hand Wave|he had a growth spurt]].▼
** [[Flip-Flop of God|Later comments]] made by the author indicate that they haven't gotten noticeably older simply because all the events of the series hadn't yet covered a year, making this more a case of [[Webcomic Time]].▼
** {{spoiler|And then the [[Time Skip]] happened, and they actually got 2 years older.}}▼
* Averted in ''[[Maison Ikkoku]]''. While just about every other Takahashi series is entrenched in comic book time, this series follows real time exactly (aside from a few issues that leave off on a cliffhanger, which are made up next issue by having twice as much time pass).▼
** Note that, despite this, nobody (save the two recurring children) visibly ages; however, this is most likely because all of the main characters (save the children) were in their early 20's to early 30's at the start of the series, and the series only ran seven years.▼
* Averted and lampshaded in ''[[City Hunter]]'', as people age and seasons go exactly in tune with the manga's release dates, and fourth wall jokes are made by the characters about how, in many mangas, people do not age, but "years are strictly counted in this one".▼
* ''[[Inuyasha]]'' ran from 1996-2008. Kagome was exactly fifteen in the first episode (it was her birthday). She hadn't quite hit sixteen when the next to last chapter was published, then there was a three year [[Time Skip]] [[Distant Finale|to the last episode]].▼
* The ''[[Kimagure Orange Road]]'' anime fell prey to this. Kyosuke (and, by extension, since they shared the day, Hikaru) only ever got one birthday that we saw on-screen. And what year of life it was for them never actually got mentioned. This makes things a tiny bit jarring when we can ''see'' that time is definitely passing, but there weren't any real clues to which year of school they were currently in—and then we jump ahead in the first movie, to Kyosuke and Madoka's entrance exams for college...▼
* From the passing of seasons, which are clearly marked, ''[[Aria]]'' spans the better part of three Martian years, or five to six Earth years in the anime and manga, respectively. Yet Alice, who we first meet at 14 years old while attending middle school, doesn't graduate from it until five Earth years have passed. The other main characters also seem to have aged little—most noticeably, in the anime, Ai.▼
* Each chapter of ''[[Yotsubato|Yostuba&!]]'' takes place on a specific date, which in 60 chapters has run from mid-July to mid-October. However, [[Word of God]] is that each chapter is set in the year it's published, which allows the author to keep technology and pop-culture references current, instead of stuck back in 2003 when he started.▼
* In ''[[Fruits Basket]]'' in other people's flash backs the three oldest members of the juunishi, Hatori, Ayame and Shigure, have a tendency to look younger, but not young enough. Or, in the case of Hatori, doing things he shouldn't be able to at that age—he is apparently already a doctor when he {{spoiler|erases Momiji's mother's memory}}. To be fair it's not clear how old Momiji is at the time (and he probably looks younger than he is), but he couldn't really be older than 5 (people leaving his mother having a breakdown for 5 years is pushing it). If Momiji is five then it makes Hatori 16...and already a qualified doctor and not aging all that much for 11 years until the series starts. Hmm....▼
** In one of the fanbooks, it's made clear that Hatori was not yet a doctor at the time, and that while he also followed his father into medicine, the memory erasure is a separate ability also handed down in his family.▼
** Notably, Hatori was in his school uniform when he erased Momiji's mother's memory, so he clearly wasn't a doctor yet.▼
* ''[[Glass Mask]]''. The ([[Print Long Runners|still ongoing]]) manga started in 1976, and was set in then-present day. In later volumes, we're told outright that a little more than seven in-universe years have passed since then; the characters age believably, and the technology level is entirely compatible with the mid-80s... except cell phones and the internet have been featured and discussed (as in, "in this day and age it's normal to talk to people you've never met over the internet").▼
* ''[[From Eroica with Love]]'' embraces this trope fully.▼
* ''[[Lupin III]]'' has been around since 1967, and none of the characters look any older. This is fine, since the franchise clearly runs on [[Negative Continuity]], but Lupin's grandfather is still canonically Arsene Lupin. Who was born in 1874. Assuming an average of 45+ years between each generation of the Lupin dynasty isn't ''impossible'' (especially considering [[Casanova|their]] [[Handsome Lech|reputations]]), but gets a little less probable with every passing year.▼
* ''[[Doraemon]]'' managed to outlive one of its creators, and yet poor Nobita and his friends are still in the fourth grade.▼
* ''[[Crayon Shin-chan]]'' [[Author Existence Failure|sadly also outlived his creator]]. To give an idea of how bad this series is with Comic Book Time: Shin-chan is 5 when the manga starts. His mother's friend Keiko marries, gets pregnant and has a baby. Later on Shin-chan's mom also gets pregnant and has a daughter, Himawari. ''Shin-chan's still five'', and even better, ''the babies are the same age''!▼
** Even better, an episode parodying ''[[Back to The Future]]'' aired in 2010 claimed Shin-chan's parents met "8 years ago". When they travel back to said 8 years ago, it's ''2002''. Apparently Shin-chan was born in 2005, nearly a decade and a half after the series ''started''.▼
* Episode 7 of ''[[Daily Lives of High School Boys]]'' anime downright declares:▼
{{quote|'''Hidenori''':Well, this anime is like [[Sazae-san]]. We'll always be in our [[Second Year Protagonist|second year of high school]].}}▼
== Comic Books ==
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▲== Anime and Manga ==
▲* After over 15 years of ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'', Ash is (according to the official Japanese site) ''still'' 10 years old. On a 1:1 basis, he'd be 25 as of 2012. To be fair though, this would make his friendship with Dawn (who debuts nine years into the show at age 10) incredibly awkward... To make things even worse, they've acknowledged that a year or more has passed more than once; apparently, time passes but nobody ages.
▲** And just to drive the point home, the dub has Meowth telling Dawn in their first meeting that "We've been chasing Pikachu since you've been alive."
▲*** Given Team Rocket's status as local [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|fourth-wall breakers]] who have explicitly referred to the show's staff in the past, Meowth's in a pretty good position to be referring to ''actual production time'' that nobody else in the cast would know about.
▲** For the record, the ''[[Pokémon Special]]'' manga (which follows a plot closer to the video games) does not follow this trope; there are numerous [[Time Skip|timeskips]], and save when characters are drawn chibi, every character ages correctly.
▲*** Of [[Incredibly Lame Pun|special]] note is Red. Like Ash, he starts his quest at the age of 10, but near the end of the FireRed/LeafGreen arc [[Shirtless Scene|you can really appreciate that he is now 16]]. [[Stupid Sexy Flanders|Like, ''really'' notice it]].
▲** Other manga do not follow ''Special'' though. The protagonists stay the same age no matter how long it is. Even the ''second'' [[Pocket Monsters (manga)|adaptation]], and the longest airing one, follows this. It follows a similar plot to the anime (despite being five months older), with the protagonist going various regions with his Pikachu.
▲* ''[[Detective Conan]]'' is a more extreme case, as it frequently references the current time of year, with some holidays celebrated more than once, yet after 12 years of episodes, Conan is still in the first grade. A clear example can be seen during the time Conan is investigating Eisuke Hondou; the "Shadow of the Black Organization" arc combines two cases that take place at [[Japanese Holidays|New Years and Setsuban]] respectively, while his disappearance in the next plot arc happens at the end of December. The latter arc keeps things vague by referring to an event that happened a few hundred episodes before Eisuke Hondou even appeared as "several months ago". Granted, this is necessary to the whole point of the series; if Conan aged in real time, he would be older than he was before the de-aging.
▲** As an update to the above, it would now be 14 years in the anime, 16 in the manga. [[Word of God]] even confirms that it is Comic Book Time. Most fans assume that only the episodes relevant to the main plot are actually happening, and maybe a few other episodes important to character development.
▲* While the first three shows in the ''[[Pretty Cure]]'' franchise aged characters in real time, ''[[Yes! Pretty Cure 5]]'' has instead made use of Comic Book Time—all the characters are the same age now as they were in February 2007, despite clearly going through summer and Christmas. Part of this is may be because Karen and Komachi are in their last year of middle school.
▲* Likewise, the ''[[Ouran High School Host Club]]'' anime has Honey alluding to graduating from high school next year. Since the manga is still ongoing, the author tells us not to worry about stuff like that.
▲** The manga explicitly ignores the passage of time, except to give seasonal settings, keeping all the characters in the same year as when they started. However, {{spoiler|it's been averted since they've finally graduated}}.
▲* [[Fan Wank|Serious discussion]] on whether the goddesses in ''[[Ah! My Goddess]]'' age mostly glosses over the fact that the manga has been running [[Print Long Runners|for 20 years]]; aside from [[Art Evolution]] and the characters [[Character Development|learning and doing new things]], nowhere ''near'' that much time has passed for them.
▲* [[Lampshaded]] in ''[[One Piece]]'''s letter column, where the author explains that "The characters have their birthdays every year, but they turn the same age every time, those lucky bastards."
▲** And yet somehow Coby became [[Bishonen|noticeably]] older when he reappeared. The author claimed [[Hand Wave|he had a growth spurt]].
▲** [[Flip-Flop of God|Later comments]] made by the author indicate that they haven't gotten noticeably older simply because all the events of the series hadn't yet covered a year, making this more a case of [[Webcomic Time]].
▲** {{spoiler|And then the [[Time Skip]] happened, and they actually got 2 years older.}}
▲* Averted in ''[[Maison Ikkoku]]''. While just about every other Takahashi series is entrenched in comic book time, this series follows real time exactly (aside from a few issues that leave off on a cliffhanger, which are made up next issue by having twice as much time pass).
▲** Note that, despite this, nobody (save the two recurring children) visibly ages; however, this is most likely because all of the main characters (save the children) were in their early 20's to early 30's at the start of the series, and the series only ran seven years.
▲* Averted and lampshaded in ''[[City Hunter]]'', as people age and seasons go exactly in tune with the manga's release dates, and fourth wall jokes are made by the characters about how, in many mangas, people do not age, but "years are strictly counted in this one".
▲* ''[[Inuyasha]]'' ran from 1996-2008. Kagome was exactly fifteen in the first episode (it was her birthday). She hadn't quite hit sixteen when the next to last chapter was published, then there was a three year [[Time Skip]] [[Distant Finale|to the last episode]].
▲* The ''[[Kimagure Orange Road]]'' anime fell prey to this. Kyosuke (and, by extension, since they shared the day, Hikaru) only ever got one birthday that we saw on-screen. And what year of life it was for them never actually got mentioned. This makes things a tiny bit jarring when we can ''see'' that time is definitely passing, but there weren't any real clues to which year of school they were currently in—and then we jump ahead in the first movie, to Kyosuke and Madoka's entrance exams for college...
▲* From the passing of seasons, which are clearly marked, ''[[Aria]]'' spans the better part of three Martian years, or five to six Earth years in the anime and manga, respectively. Yet Alice, who we first meet at 14 years old while attending middle school, doesn't graduate from it until five Earth years have passed. The other main characters also seem to have aged little—most noticeably, in the anime, Ai.
▲* Each chapter of ''[[Yotsubato|Yostuba&!]]'' takes place on a specific date, which in 60 chapters has run from mid-July to mid-October. However, [[Word of God]] is that each chapter is set in the year it's published, which allows the author to keep technology and pop-culture references current, instead of stuck back in 2003 when he started.
▲* In ''[[Fruits Basket]]'' in other people's flash backs the three oldest members of the juunishi, Hatori, Ayame and Shigure, have a tendency to look younger, but not young enough. Or, in the case of Hatori, doing things he shouldn't be able to at that age—he is apparently already a doctor when he {{spoiler|erases Momiji's mother's memory}}. To be fair it's not clear how old Momiji is at the time (and he probably looks younger than he is), but he couldn't really be older than 5 (people leaving his mother having a breakdown for 5 years is pushing it). If Momiji is five then it makes Hatori 16...and already a qualified doctor and not aging all that much for 11 years until the series starts. Hmm....
▲** In one of the fanbooks, it's made clear that Hatori was not yet a doctor at the time, and that while he also followed his father into medicine, the memory erasure is a separate ability also handed down in his family.
▲** Notably, Hatori was in his school uniform when he erased Momiji's mother's memory, so he clearly wasn't a doctor yet.
▲* ''[[Glass Mask]]''. The ([[Print Long Runners|still ongoing]]) manga started in 1976, and was set in then-present day. In later volumes, we're told outright that a little more than seven in-universe years have passed since then; the characters age believably, and the technology level is entirely compatible with the mid-80s... except cell phones and the internet have been featured and discussed (as in, "in this day and age it's normal to talk to people you've never met over the internet").
▲* ''[[From Eroica with Love]]'' embraces this trope fully.
▲* ''[[Lupin III]]'' has been around since 1967, and none of the characters look any older. This is fine, since the franchise clearly runs on [[Negative Continuity]], but Lupin's grandfather is still canonically Arsene Lupin. Who was born in 1874. Assuming an average of 45+ years between each generation of the Lupin dynasty isn't ''impossible'' (especially considering [[Casanova|their]] [[Handsome Lech|reputations]]), but gets a little less probable with every passing year.
▲* ''[[Doraemon]]'' managed to outlive one of its creators, and yet poor Nobita and his friends are still in the fourth grade.
▲* ''[[Crayon Shin-chan]]'' [[Author Existence Failure|sadly also outlived his creator]]. To give an idea of how bad this series is with Comic Book Time: Shin-chan is 5 when the manga starts. His mother's friend Keiko marries, gets pregnant and has a baby. Later on Shin-chan's mom also gets pregnant and has a daughter, Himawari. ''Shin-chan's still five'', and even better, ''the babies are the same age''!
▲** Even better, an episode parodying ''[[Back to The Future]]'' aired in 2010 claimed Shin-chan's parents met "8 years ago". When they travel back to said 8 years ago, it's ''2002''. Apparently Shin-chan was born in 2005, nearly a decade and a half after the series ''started''.
▲* Episode 7 of ''[[Daily Lives of High School Boys]]'' anime downright declares:
▲{{quote|'''Hidenori''':Well, this anime is like [[Sazae-san]]. We'll always be in our [[Second Year Protagonist|second year of high school]].}}
Line 195 ⟶ 197:
* One of [[Kim Newman]]'s short stories, "Coastal City", featured a [[Batman|Commissioner Gordon]]-like character for heroine "Amazon Girl", on the edge of noticing that, among other paradoxes created by the sliding timescale of the universe he lives in, his war-hero past was being repeatedly updated, shifting from [[World War II]] to the [[Korean War]], the [[Vietnam War]], and now the [[Gulf War]]. {{spoiler|Fortunately for him, a fresh crisis distracted him from the potential existential breakdown.}}
* Leslie Charteris' ''The Saint'' has flitted back and forth in print between period pieces and a sliding timescale. In the introduction for ''Catch the Saint'', published in 1975, Charteris notes that these stories took place before 1939, since "literary detectives sharper than Inspector Teal" would realize that, based on topical references in earlier adventures, the Saint would have grown too old to fight crime, and only a rejuvenation out of science fiction could deal with this situation. (While some Saint stories did feature the paranormal, which later collection in the anthology the Fantastic Saint, Charteris declined to pursue such an approach for the Saint's aging.) However, later books did not follow this trend. In 1997, Burl Barer wrote a new Saint novel that, in his blog, Barer stated took place in contemporary times. Viola Inselheim, a young child in 1934's ''The Saint in New York'', has aged to adulthood in ''Capture the Saint'', but Barer otherwise sidesteps the issue of time. Film and TV versions of the Saint have never gotten down as period pieces. The Roger Moore version took place in the then-contemporary 1960's. Post-Roger Moore TV versions such as those with Simon Dutton, Andrew Clarke, and Ian Ogilvy also eschewed the period piece approach. The 1997 Val Kilmer film, though released almost 70 years since the Saint's first appearance in print in 1928, took place in then contemporary times, if not the future. (In the director's commentary, Philip Noyce noted that he tried to extrapolate and anticipate developments in Russia. This was reasonably successful, as a plot point in that film involved heating oil shortages.)
* [[P. G.
* ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' averts this trope for the most part, with each novel being set just at about the same time as it was written. However, Harry's young apprentice Molly somehow managed to have two birthdays (going from 17 to 19) in the ten-month interim between ''Proven Guilty'' and ''White Night''.
* ''[[The Executioner]]'' action-adventure series was created by Don Pendleton in 1969, and after being purchased by Gold Eagle is [[Extruded Book Product|still going strong]]. The series starts with the protagonist Mack Bolan as a Vietnam veteran (early novels even mention service in the Korean War), a fact that's not even mentioned now as it would make Bolan seem too old.
Line 210 ⟶ 212:
* Most of the "pulp heroes" such as the Shadow, the Spider, Doc Savage, etc. did not run into this, as few of them lasted in the 1950's (though the Black Bat and the Phantom [Curtis Van Loan] did, and the Black Bat returned for 700 adventures in Germany). However, in the 1960's, Walter Gibson wrote The Return of the Shadow, and Dennis Lynds continued from there with stories of the Shadow set in contemporary times.
* [[John Putnam Thatcher]], protagonist of Emma Lathen's mystery novels, spends the entire series (from 1961 to 1997) "a youthful 60". Slightly averted with recurring character Kenneth Nicholls—while he doesn't appear to age and remains a junior trust officer, he goes from single to married with two kids.
* The ''[[Alex Rider]]'' books supposedly take place over the course of a year (if that), but technology has kept pace with reality. Alex's gadgets are the most obvious example - in early books, they were hidden in Game Boys or a copy of ''Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets'', but they've since moved on to iPods.
** Anthony Horowitz is fond of this; the first [[Diamond Brothers]] book came out in the eighties, while a later book features the London Eye and is stated to be set in 2004.
* [[Madeleine L'Engle]] appears to have scrambled her own timeline in her "Chronos" books. The original edition of ''Meet the Austins'' (1960) was five chapters long: the sixth chapter, "The Anti-Muffins", was removed at her publisher's request for length. The action in ''Meet the Austins'' is not specifically dated, but its direct sequel, ''The Moon by Night'' (1963), is very definitely set in 1959: Vicky goes to see ''[[West Side Story]]'', her father mentions having met Princess Grace "back when she was plain Grace Kelly", and the family are in [[wikipedia:1959 Yellowstone earthquake|the Hebgen Lake earthquake]]. "The Anti-Muffins" was published separately in 1980, and has been included in the text of all printings of ''Meet the Austins'' since 1997: it includes a mention of the Kenny Rogers song 1978 "The Gambler". (Not to mention the hobbyist-spacesuit reference buried at the beginning of ''Meet the Austins'', which sounds like a nod to [[Robert A. Heinlein|Heinlein's]] ''[[Have Spacesuit, Will Travel]]''. L'Engle justified this in a letter by noting that she was more interested in ''kairos'', the "appropriate time," than in ''chronos'', rigorous clock time.)
* The books in the ''[[Mrs. Murphy Mysteries]]'' series by Rita Mae Brown follow the seasons.
* Patrick O'Brien did this for the ''[[Aubrey-Maturin]]'' series: around book nine or so, he encountered the problem of running out of Napoleonic War years. To get around it he had to fudge an "1812a or 1812b" to allow for the long sea voyages. Since he's pretty meticulous about [[Shown Their Work|Doing The Research]], he admits this fact in the forewords of the books affected.
* Averted in [[Ephraim Kishon]]'s satirical short stories. We see Kishon's kids age in [[Real Time]], from toddlers to teenagers.
* Averted in the ''[[Amelia Peabody]]'' books. Amelia -- already nearly a [[Christmas Cake|spinster]] in the first book -- married, had a child, and made frequent excursions to Egypt as friends and family themselves aged, had children, and a second generation married and had children of their own, all while the calendar progressed from the late 19th Century to and through [[World War I]]. It reached a point where the late Barbara Peters ended up setting later books in the series earlier in the chronology, so as not to unrealistically extend the lives of Amelia and her contemporaries.
* Emily Pollifax, title character of the ''[[Mrs. Pollifax (franchise)|Mrs. Pollifax]]'' series of [[Spy Fiction]] novels, is in her early sixties when she applies for a job as a spy with the CIA in ''The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax'', published in 1966. She's somewhere in her seventies, fourteen books and [[In-Universe]] years later, during the events of ''Mrs. Pollifax Unveiled'', published in 2000. Exacerbated by each book firmly affixing itself to current events of the time it was published, making it clear that they each take place within a year or so of their publication dates.
== Live Action TV ==
Line 223 ⟶ 226:
* ''[[iCarly]]'' averted this in the first and second seasons, with them clearly moving up a grade, as well as the cast clearly entering puberty and growing up. They also explained how their school was a combined Middle and High school as they moved to a grade, that in almost all US education systems, means moving from a Junior or Middle school to a new High School.
** After season 2 however, it gets hazy. It's likely they are now in grade 10, but it's possible they could still be in grade 9, or have moved ahead to grade 11.
* In ''[[
Line 231 ⟶ 234:
* This happens in pretty much ''every'' newspaper strip, including most of the serious, "soap opera" ones, so listing exceptions is probably a better idea.
* The storyline of ''[[For Better or For Worse]]'' ran in real time from its inception to 2008. Then it rebooted to the early days, using a combination of reruns, [[Retcon|modified reruns]], and new strips drawn to look like the old ones. Word on the street is that this was [[Executive Meddling|the syndicate's idea]].
* ''[[Gasoline Alley]]'', one of the [[Long Runner|oldest strips still in existence]], also operates in real time (though temporarily halted and then restarted); old characters die off eventually, including the family dog and many of the original characters from the Alley. Walt Wallet is still hanging on, though, and the fact that he is now technically over 120 means that things are getting fudged.
* ''[[Baby Blues]]'' has a slowly sliding timeline: Zoe started out as an infant and grew into a toddler as the need for new material arose. Since then, she has been given siblings as necessary to keep the strip's title accurate.
** Wanda's pregnancies have both taken place in real time, however, without any noticeable aging from the other siblings occurring in the meantime.
** Kirkman and Scott state that they age around a "Three to one Ratio".
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* ''[[Luann]]'' & company have been in high school since 1985, approximately twenty-four years.
** Brad has since graduated high school and become a fireman, and Luann is now in high school, but this seems to be a case of a sudden one-time jump in the timeline about 10 years ago, combined with [[Art Evolution|updated looks for the characters]], which apparently pushed the non-adults forward about 4 years, but since then they've stopped aging again.
* Many of the characters in ''[[Peanuts]]'' aged somewhat since their introduction. Schroeder and Lucy started out as toddlers, then grew to Charlie Brown's age; Lucy's "baby brother" Linus grew to one or two grades below Charlie Brown (and has been seen in the same classroom as him on occasion). Sally also started as a baby and later caught up to Linus. Rerun also was born during the strip's run and ended up as a toddler. Charlie Brown himself also aged somewhat over the course of the strip; he stated that he was four in [http://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1950/11/03 an 1950 strip], six in [http://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1957/11/17
* ''[[Funky Winkerbean]]'' started off this way. The comic began in 1972 and the characters remained in high school for the first 20 years of the comic's existence. Then, in 1992, it was established that the characters had graduated high school in 1988, and the comic picked up in real time from just after their college days. In October 2007, there was another [[Time Skip]], and the comic is now presumably taking place about 9 years into the future ([[The Other Wiki]] says that the original main characters were to be 46 years old after the time skip, and based on graduating in 1988, they probably would've been born during the '69-'70 school year and should therefore have only been 37 just before the time skip.) So far, it's been impossible to tell the difference between the two eras. (It's not clear whether the current setting is circa 2020, or the pre-[[Time Skip]] era has been retconned ''back'' 10 years, keeping the strip in the present day.)
* Long-running Scottish comics ''The Broons'' and ''Oor Wullie'' both make heavy use of this, having kept all characters at identical ages since they were first published in the 1930s. While the setting progressed around the characters for the first few decades, the comics seem to have settled into a sort of temporal limbo that darts back and forth between the 1950s and the present day at will, shifting from a "present day" setting to a nostalgic yet nonspecific "good old days" one.
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** He's actually had a couple of birthdays in the Archie comics but since they're always rebooting the universe he never ages beyond 16.
** It's made even more painfully obvious by the aging of characters like Amy and Tails.
* ''[[Mega Man]]'' used to be relatively good about keeping track of the time between entries with promo material for ''4'' established 174 days (175 if it was a leap year) between the original and ''2'', and 81 days between ''2'' and ''3'', [https://web.archive.org/web/20060504144503/http://www.capcom.co.jp/ps1books/index.html Capcom's old official site] clearly stating a year between ''3'' and ''4'', two months between ''4'' and ''5'', and one year between ''5'' and ''6'' while the opening for ''7'' confirms 6 months passed since 6. Since then, ''8'', ''Mega Man & Bass'', ''9'', ''10'', and ''11'' have given absolutely no indication how long it has been since anything else. This is possibly why Kalinka, despite her popularity, seems have disappeared from the series as her young age (9 as of ''4'') would make this too obvious.
* ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'' generally tries to avoid this, but has indulged the trope on occasion when the timeslips they have to cover are not too severe or can be handwaved.
** The ''[[Super Robot Wars Alpha]]'' timeline follows consistent time, with it being explicitly mentioned returning cast in Alpha 3 are at least two years older than in Alpha 1. There is a lot of comic book time in effect for blending the various UC Gundam characters over 70 plus years of canon together, but by being vague with dates aside from an explicit seven-year gap between the backstory of Alpha 1 and its proper start, this is easy to [[Hand Wave]].
** UC Gundam in general is prone to this in SRW plots if they mix early and late UC, which often have to portray events that took place decades apart in their source canons during a much smaller timescale.
** More minor cases of timeslips, if they just cover anywhere from 2-3 years, they've managed to [[Hand Wave]] these. In ''[[Super Robot Wars W]]'' despite the fact only six months pass between the first and second halves, many series either have advanced to their formal plots from several months prior (such as Gundam SEED), had a bizarre blend of sequel and prequel used to pad out their timescale (such as ''[[Tekkamen Blade]]'' and ''[[Detonator Orgun]]'', which was partially folded into the Tekkaman canon), or even had characters who look noticably older from several years passing (like the ''[[Martian Successor Nadesico]]'' cast by the time of the movie from the TV show). The last is really strange since Ruri Hoshino looking noticeably older is explained as a "growth spurt".
== Web Animation ==
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== Webcomics ==
* [[Avalon (webcomic)|Avalon]] averted this for the most part, with the majority of it taking placing in real time and with timeskips after long storylines. It was played straight near the end of its run when the ugliness that is [[Schedule Slip]] reared its head and caused week to month long delays.
* This is parodied in ''[[Supermegatopia]]'', in which [https://web.archive.org/web/20100529063734/http://www.supermegatopia.com/profiles/profiles.php?thisLink=mongooseguy.txt Mongoose Lad] really ''was'' Ferret Man's boy sidekick for decades, due to a mutation that caused him to age far slower than normal.
* ''[[Achewood]]'' characters age normally... except for Phillipe. Phillipe is five. He will ''always'' be five.
* From ''[[PvP]]'':
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'''Cole:''' You'll appreciate it when you're in your thirties.
'''Francis:''' ''[http://www.pvponline.com/2006/12/27/dec-27-2006/ I'm never going to be in my thirties!]'' }}
** Two years after that strip, Francis and Marcie [[Sex as Rite-
** This is done inconsistently, though, as [https://web.archive.org/web/20120210022313/http://www.pvponline.com/2008/05/09/case-file-mcmlxxi-xxi/ this strip] implies that less than four years have passed since the comic's launch, modern pop-culture references notwithstanding.
** On the other hand, Cole's daughter (Born 1999/2000) dropped out of the strip for a decade and is now in college.
* Averted in ''[[Kevin and Kell]]'' (and also in Bill Holbrook's other strips). Coney was born and is growing up, Lindesfarne graduated and went to university, and even Rudy has grown up and matured. A little.
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** This was lampshaded in ''Scooby Doo: Pirates Ahoy!'' The Gang goes on a cruise to celebrate Fred's birthday. At the wharf, they ask him how old he is. His response? "37. [[Beat|*beat*]] 38... 39... Here it is. Dock 40."
* ''[[King of the Hill]]'' has an interesting timeline. At the beginning of the series, Bobby was 11 years old and had a birthday. He turned 13 in the fifth season and hasn't really aged since. In the fourth season, Luanne stated that she was 19½, then in season 9, she celebrated her 21st birthday. John Redcorn was said to be 36 in a season three episode and 40 in a season 10 episode.
* ''[[Rugrats]]''
* The main characters of the TV show ''[[Home Movies]]'' have stayed eight-years-old throughout its four year run.
* ''[[Liberty's Kids]]''- the show covered 1773 right up to about 1789, and the main characters never aged - although all the adults around them did! By the end of the series Sarah was still 15, James 14, and Henri only 8 - after about 16 years!
** Leading to weird scenes where they recall events that happened—that they ''[[The Gump|participated]]'' in—eight, ten, twelve years ago, and marvel at how much things have changed in the meantime...
* On ''[[American Dad]]'' Steve will always be 14 and Hayley always 18 or 19, but the episode "Tears of a Clooney" alone takes place over the course of an entire year, with little room left in its chain of events for other events to occur. Though, since each of the Christmas episodes has involved time/reality manipulation of some sort, the [[Timey-Wimey Ball]] may be playing a role.
* [[
** It is worth noting that everyone is a program of some form and, as Enzo and AndrAIa show, age depends upon how much processing power is dedicated to them (games being CPU-intensive).
* [[The Fairly OddParents]]: Timmy Turner has remained ten for over ten years. It was assumed that he had turned eleven in one episode, "Birthday Bashed", but a later episode, "Manic-Mom Day", established that he's still ten years old.
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