What were popular things writers used to do in their fanfics that have pretty much faded away.

And? I mean, technically you are correct but when has that ever stopped anyone before? The copyright lawyers at the RIAA are way more focused on those who actually upload the music itself instead of copy-pasting lyrics.

Let's be honest, I think the only reason why song fics went away was due to FFN cracking down on them way back when FFN was still the biggest fanfiction site on the internet.

It's also why script fics died out, since they were one of the first things to get cracked down on.

Smut didn't die out because it's just way too popular and it was an open secret that you could post smut on FFN as long as you hid it behind an M rating and used the citrus scale or other euphemisms in the summary of your fic. But there are a few exceptions like the 2012 purges.

/r/FanFiction Thread Parent