Talk about posts that reached up and attempted to strangle me with a reality check. I think the answer is two-fold. (I miss these fics too, and I didn't realize just HOW MUCH I missed them until OP mentioned it.)
People... don't DO those things anymore.
2. Readers don't often engage in crack fic/drabble/ficlet fic nearly as much.
Number one is sad, so we'll tackle this one first. But between urban sprawl, the loss of teenager 'hang out' spaces, and this huge push from anime and television (often) to get away from having "filler episodes", there's so much less general exposure to it.
As a teenager, just dicking around with my friends through my early teens and 20's - the amount of shenanigans we got in at gas stations, 7-11's and Wal-Mart just being fucking TEENAGERS was substantial. Today, there's a huge pushback against that because of how many people have become "anti-teenager" for a variety of reasons. If you're not doing those sorts of shenanigans yourself, and you're not seeing them in your media... the new generations of writers aren't going to write those types of fic.
...fuck that made me so sad, teenagers and young adults right now have shit fucking HARD. I feel for you all.
Number two. Readers don't often engage with crack fic, or 'lol what if' fics nearly as much as they used to. With the advent of being able to search for precisely what you want, and often having more than enough to be picky about what you read, AND the fast fandom turn-time that so many people go through - this is a niche that... most people aren't interested in any longer, so it doesn't get attention.
There are groups of folks who only want to read canon divergence - so there won't be 'gang goes to 7-11' in a lot of fandoms. Or people hear the "writing advice" that everything has to drive the story forward and has to have a point or they should cut it - so there's this press to move away from things being silly.
That leaves very little room for people exploring filler fic and having fun with it, and just writing what your heart desires. Slice of life stories are bucketed in "college AU", "coffee shop AU", "Roommate AU", and I love all of those, and enjoy writing all of them - but it feels like a lot of the filler has been stripped out because that's what is considered "good writing" these days.
I miss slice of life fic, too, OP.
Might have to go write some in your honor.
There aren't any 7-11's in E33, but some slice of life does the soul good.
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