I realised I've accidentally done something goofy with God of Outcasts

I've done that thing where like, the first 25k is completely irrelevant, and almost acts as a gatekeeper.  But one of the problems I always had with the original version was that there were all of these background elements that never really got adequately explained because they weren't included in any of the main fics, and got very easily missed by a lot of readers.  The whole, "there are two Lokis in the story" thing, for instance.  That confused so many people, because they missed the stories where Old Loki was out clowning around on a different spot on the timeline.

So now I've got this really bizarre setup that serves the narrative so much better, but which I think winds up being really off-putting to people.  It opens up with Laufey, of all people, as a POV character.  After that, we go to Odin and this weird version of Loki and his kidnapped dwarf, just going on an epic road trip to find a few jars of blood.  And only if you get past all of that does the story finally start using familiar characters.  And the fic is now about 60,000 words in, and it's only just starting to come around to a point where Old Loki has become relevant again, though still only tangentially.  It's still going to be about another 20k before some real connections start to be drawn.

I know from people who are reading it in the newsletter that the new version is going over well, but it seems like getting people past that first 25k is becoming a real hurdle.  Cuz let's be real.  Nobody really cares about Laufey or Odin as characters, and most of the introduction is told from the POV of an original character.  But I wanted to have these background interludes feel somewhat disconnected from the main story, because these stories all happened 20-30 (Asgardian) years in the past.  Nobody knows, or even expects that Odin will overthrow his own brother and become king.  The prophecies of Asgard's destruction are uttered with wildly different interpretations.  The idiots running around during Bor and Cul's reigns have no idea what consequences their actions will bring, and the story could be told without these interludes, but I think it's much more rewarding for the reader to be given the chance to make these connections themselves rather than have them be presented as foregone conclusions later.

The story opens with Ragnarök, and then introduces the wrong version of Loki, and that is not an accident.  Unfortunately, it seems to be a bunch of stuff nobody cares about.  Whoops.