Editing Continuity (fiction) (section)

== Ageless characters ==
{{main|Floating timeline}}

Some fiction ignores continuity to allow characters to slow or stop the aging process, despite real-world markers like major social or technological changes. In comics this is sometimes referred to as a "floating timeline", where the fiction takes place in a "continuous present".<ref>{{Citation|last=Jeffery|first=Scott|title=The Rhizome of Comic Book Culture|date=2016|work=The Posthuman Body in Superhero Comics: Human, Superhuman, Transhuman, Post/Human|pages=37–67|editor-last=Jeffery|editor-first=Scott|series=Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels|place=New York|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan US|language=en|doi=10.1057/978-1-137-54950-1_3|isbn=978-1-137-54950-1}}</ref> [[Roz Kaveney]] suggests that comic books use this technique to satisfy "the commercial need to keep certain characters going forever".<ref name="Kaveney">{{cite book |title=Superheroes!: Capes and Crusaders in Comics and Films|page=22 |last=Kaveney |first=Roz |author-link=Roz Kaveney |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |year=2008 |isbn=9781845115692}}</ref> This is also due to the fact that the authors have no need to accommodate the aging of their characters, which is also typical of most animated television shows.<ref name=Goertz>{{Cite book|last1=Goertz|first1=Allie|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xndPDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT98|title=100 Things The Simpsons Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die|last2=Prescott|first2=Julia|last3=Oakley|first3=Bill|last4=Weinstein|first4=Josh|date=2018-09-18|publisher=Triumph Books|isbn=978-1-64125-109-9|language=ar}}</ref> Kevin Wanner compares the use of a sliding timescale in comics to the way ageless figures in myths are depicted interacting with the contemporary world of the storyteller.<ref>{{cite book|last=Wanner|first=Kevin J.|title=Irreverence and the Sacred: Critical Studies in the History of Religions|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2018|editor-last1=Urban|editor-first1=Hugh|editor1-link=Hugh Urban|page=84|chapter=Authority Apart from Truth: Superhero Comic Book Stories as Myths|editor-last2=Johnson|editor-first2=Greg}}</ref> When certain stories in comics, especially origin stories, are rewritten, they often retain key events but are updated to a contemporary time, such as with the comic book character Tony Stark, who invents his [[Iron Man]] armor in a different war depending on when the story is told.<ref>{{cite book|last=Méon|first=J. M.|title=Comics Memory: Archives and Styles|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|year=2018|isbn=978-3319917450|editor-last1=Ahmed|editor-first1=Maaheen|pages=203–204|chapter=Sons and Grandsons of Origins: Narrative Memory in Marvel Superhero Comics|editor-last2=Crucifix|editor-first2=Benoît}}</ref>