Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Floating timeline

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Okay, I see a pretty reasonable consensus to not delete outright. Whether or not to merge can be determined at a discussion outside of AfD (it shouldn't need to be said that this close doesn't preclude a merge discussion, it invites it). ♠PMC♠ (talk) 06:52, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Floating timeline

[Hide this box] New to Articles for deletion (AfD)? Read these primers!

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

This article is entirely original research. There's a short WP:COATRACK of examples that's been thrown in by various fans. There's nothing to say here except a lot of long-running series are pretty inaccurate when it comes to characters' ages and real-world context. Other mundane plot holes you can criticize about fiction: the elasticity of how long it takes to go from one place to another, the number of fat sitcom dads with surprisingly attractive wives, video games where you can literally bring people back from the dead unless they are killed in a cut scene... again, you can make lots of funny observations about our entertainment. But articles need to be more than a short description of a trope, let alone an endless list of fiction that fits those tropes, based on original research. There isn't any significant coverage in third party sources to write anything other than a short description and a list of examples. Fails the general notability guideline. Shooterwalker (talk) 04:42, 3 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete There is some idea here but the name and content are not reliably sourced in a way to justify an article. Basically this can be addressed in article where it applies, beause there are lots of different ways it plays out, with multiple reboots and the like coming into place.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:44, 3 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Television-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 00:08, 4 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 00:08, 4 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Comics and animation-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 00:08, 4 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 00:10, 4 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete The only hits I got in Gbooks search was for Adobe Flash. This doesn't seem like a prominent term, and the article is largely a WP:DICDEF. The TVTropes article on this should be sufficient._{ZXCVBNM (TALK)} 20:58, 4 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep The article as it stands is not properly sourced. However, I believe an appropriate article could be written, using sources like, e.g., the journal article "How Time Works in The Simpsons" (Abstract: "This article uses two groups of case-study episodes to explore the complexities and perplexities that arise from the long-running use of a ‘floating timeline’ within The Simpsons."), the book The Posthuman Body in Superhero Comics, the essay Myth of Superman referenced in that book, and other works of media criticism. This appears to be a term and concept in use which has received some coverage. ~ oulfis 🌸(talk) 05:19, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per the significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources.

Waltonen, Karma; Du Vernay, Denise, eds. (2019). The Simpsons' Beloved Springfield: Essays on the TV Series and Town That Are Part of Us All. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. pp. 200–204. ISBN 978-1-4766-7455-1. Retrieved 2020-06-07.
Goertz, Allie; Prescott, Julia (2018). 100 Things The Simpsons Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die. Chicago: Triumph Books. ISBN 978-1-64125-109-9. Retrieved 2020-06-07.
Davis, Amy M.; Gilboy, Jemma; Zborowski, James (2015). "How Time Works in The Simpsons". Animation. 10 (15). SAGE Publishing. doi:10.1177/1746847715602403.
Aguasaco, Carlos (2017). "From the Picaresque Novel to El Chavo del 8". In Friedrich, Daniel; Colmenares, Erica (eds.). Resonances of El Chavo del Ocho in Latin American Childhood, Schooling, and Societies. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 73, 79, 82. ISBN 978-1-4742-9890-2. Retrieved 2020-06-07.
Jeffery, Scott (2016). Sabin, Roger (ed.). The Posthuman Body in Superhero Comics: Human, Superhuman, Transhuman, Post/Human. London: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 53. doi:10.1057/978-1-137-54950-1_3. ISBN 978-1-137-57822-8. Retrieved 2020-06-07.
Cross, Mary, ed. (2013). 100 People Who Changed 20th-Century America. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. p. 591. ISBN 978-1-61069-085-0. Retrieved 2020-06-07.

Sources with quotes

Waltonen, Karma; Du Vernay, Denise, eds. (2019). The Simpsons' Beloved Springfield: Essays on the TV Series and Town That Are Part of Us All. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. pp. 200–204. ISBN 978-1-4766-7455-1. Retrieved 2020-06-07.
The article notes:
This is clearest in the way that The Simpsons works with a floating timeline. A floating timeline is a plot device used to explain or explain away inconsistencies in the way that events and characters exist within a world. In The Simpsons, the characters never age. Therefore, a number of inconsistencies are evident in the way that memories function for the characters. One famous example of this is found in the discrepancy between two episodes—"I Married Marge" (3.12) and "That '90s Show" (9.11). In the former, a flashback shows us that Homer and Marge conceived Bart in 1980 after watching The Empire Strikes Back at a movie theater. In the latter, Marge and Homer are at an earlier stage in their relationship, before conceiving Bart, and yet this is set in the 1990s. Despite this discrepancy, the age of the characters remains the same in the "present."
For the entire duration of The Simpsons, time does not seem to move on, and this means that, by and large, things do not really change. This subverts the typical purpose of narrative, which is to create a narrative arc in which characters grow and circumstances change. Because The Simpsons takes place in the perpetual present, the people who create The Simpsons have forced themselves into a loop that they must ultimately return to. They thus affirm the present, which equates to a symbolic affirmation of the way things are or the status quo. Of course, there are exceptions. For instance, when Maude Flanders dies, she really does stay dead ("Alone Again, Natura-Diddily" 11.14), and when Apu Nahasapeemapetilon gets married, he remains married afterwards ("The Two Mrs. Nahasapeemapetilons" 9.7).
Nevertheless, in the presence of this floating timeline and because of this insistence upon a perpetual present, things must by and large remain the same in world of The Simpsons. This means that, for the most part, it is possible to watch any episode of The Simpsons in any order without necessarily feeling any sense of dislocation or confusion.
Goertz, Allie; Prescott, Julia (2018). 100 Things The Simpsons Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die. Chicago: Triumph Books. ISBN 978-1-64125-109-9. Retrieved 2020-06-07.
The book notes:
The Simpsons exists in a floating timeline typical of most animated shows. Due to the fact that the show's writers don't have to accommodate the aging of their actors, every episode of The Simpsons under the aging of their actors, every episode of The Simpsons is under the assumption that no time has passed from the previous week. No matter how many decades the show's run endures, Bart will always be 10 years old, Lisa will be eight, and Maggie will be sucking on her pacifier.
...
What's interesting about The Simpsons' take on their own future is their lack of loyalty to a singular view. Of course there are certain consistent broad strokes—Lisa's success, Bart's failings, Maggie's independence—but their Magic 8 Ball, scattered take on multiple outcomes makes the case that anything could be possible. Such is the very fabric of The Simpsons' own style of the floating timeline. It is a creative device to add new life season by season, allowing it to endure way beyond what any of us thought possible.
Davis, Amy M.; Gilboy, Jemma; Zborowski, James (2015). "How Time Works in The Simpsons". Animation. 10 (15). SAGE Publishing. doi:10.1177/1746847715602403.
The article notes:
Comic-Book Time, it is suggested, uses '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' (emphasis in original). This trope, it is claimed, 'is also quite frequently called a floating timeline' (emphasis in original), and it is that label this article will use, as it captures well the idea of a fictional world which lacks a fixed timeframe with respect to both period and duration.
The Simpsons does not adhere neatly and consistently to any one of the above tropes. Predominantly, we will suggest, it utilizes a 'floating timeline', but not, as we point out, without deviations or complications. Moreover, as we demonstrate, the sustained deployment of a predominantly floating timeline over a period of decades creates a range of time-based perplexities for animated series like The Simpsons, perplexities which do not present an ultimate solution, and which encompass issues including how our understandings of fictional characters and of our own lives are informed by time-dependent phenomena including coming of age at particular points in world history, growing older, experiencing and expecting change, and accumulating experience and a biography to inform our sense of past, present and future. Sustained theoretical discussion of these issues is beyond the scope of a short article and the disciplinary territories of its writers. What follows is offered principally as a critical discussion of a popular and culturally-significant animated television series, which also attempts to relate the experience of time offered by The Simpsons to the varied experiences of time offered elsewhere on television, but which is ultimately committed to demonstrating the peculiarity, perhaps even the uniqueness, of how time works in The Simpsons, which it has achieved by virtue of being (i) an extraordinarily long-running, (ii) animated, and (iii) a television sitcom.
...
As noted above, one of the 'rules' of the 'comic-book time' or 'floating timeline' trope is that 'you never refer to specific dates'. The Simpsons occasionally eschews such a restriction – for example, in two famous (one of them, perhaps, infamous) episodes in which we learn about Homer and Marge’s courtship(s).
Aguasaco, Carlos (2017). "From the Picaresque Novel to El Chavo del 8". In Friedrich, Daniel; Colmenares, Erica (eds.). Resonances of El Chavo del Ocho in Latin American Childhood, Schooling, and Societies. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 73, 79, 82. ISBN 978-1-4742-9890-2. Retrieved 2020-06-07.
The article notes:
There are several parallels between Lázaro de Tormes and El Chavo del Ocho: their names do not derive from their biological parents but from place names; their various trades and occupations; and the early age at which they are forced to fend for themselves. However, while Lázaro grows up in the novel, learns new trades and eventually gets married, El Chavo del 8 has a floating timeline that keeps the character frozen in time as a perpetual eight-year-old. In this sense, El Chavo del 8 follows a narrative procedure similar to that of the animated TV series The Simpsons in which the characters do not age throughout the course of 27 seasons. Maintaining this floating timeline allows RGB to update and rewrite his characters without having to represent their aging process and the social consequences of such impoverished living conditions and upbringing. His characters have no future, reality never varies for them, and thus they never face the sociopolitical consequences of the injustices represented in both the book and the TV series.
...
... As mentioned before, the floating timeline keeps the events represented in an everlasting present that permits RGB to rewrite, or at least to attempt to rewrite, some of the episodes.
...
... However, El Chavo del 8 was intended to be a realistic audiovisual comedy dealing with issues of childhood and inner-city poverty on a never-ending floating timeline. In other words, the characters are not allowed to grow old and therefore we can only trace the parallels and equivalences between El Chavo and the childhood and education of the picaros.
Jeffery, Scott (2016). Sabin, Roger (ed.). The Posthuman Body in Superhero Comics: Human, Superhuman, Transhuman, Post/Human. London: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 53. doi:10.1057/978-1-137-54950-1_3. ISBN 978-1-137-57822-8. Retrieved 2020-06-07.
The book notes:
Dittmer, for example, argues that "the tyranny of the serial" enforces a "structural limitation" on comic book discourse. Wolf-Meyer 82 and Hughes 83 make similar points and all use Moore and Gibbon's Watchmen to illustrate their arguments, comparing the finite narrative of Watchmen with ongoing superhero narratives, whose ending is always indefinitely delayed in a "continuous present" as Eco called it (or "floating timeline" as the comics community sometimes refers to it 84).
Cross, Mary, ed. (2013). 100 People Who Changed 20th-Century America. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. p. 591. ISBN 978-1-61069-085-0. Retrieved 2020-06-07.
The article notes:
The show operates on the basis of a "floating timeline," where the characters never age. Bart has been in the fourth-grade class of EEdna Krabappel since the first episode of the show. His mother, Marge, has even been quoted as saying, "It seems like he's been 10 forever."

There is sufficient coverage in reliable sources to allow floating timeline to pass Wikipedia:Notability#General notability guideline, which requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject".

Cunard (talk) 00:58, 8 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete even with the sources found, they all retread the same basic dictionary definition. Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Would also support a redirect to cartoon physics, where you’d say that cartoons don’t age. Jontesta (talk) 01:40, 8 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep – The concept is clearly notable (see above). The article is clearly under-sourced. That's not a combination suitable for AfD. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:36, 8 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Spartaz ^Humbug! 07:10, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Merge with continuity (fiction) which is a more common title for the broad topic. The issue of handling aging and time in fiction is obviously a thing but the sources seem quite weak and so we should consolidate to boil it down. Andrew🐉(talk) 10:58, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to continuity (fiction), per Andrew. As mentioned by Jontesta, even those found sources do very little but give a basic definition of the term, which is not really enough to actually develop an independent article. But, the continuity (fiction) article, as suggested by Andrew, would be the proper broad topic in which it could be adequately covered. Rorshacma (talk) 15:39, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
KEEP Sources found talking about it, plus i click Google news search link at the top of the AFD and I see more. Whether this can be merged into another article that covers additional things as well, can be discussed on the talk page of the relevant articles. Dream Focus 15:52, 12 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Its a fairly common plot device, which I knew about donkeys ago, and as a concept and dictionary definition, with some depth to it, its worth keeping. scope_creep^Talk 13:14, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. it is a genuinely valid literary concept which is worth keeping here. I agree the article should be given a bit more sourcing. --Sm8900 (talk) 17:32, 15 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.