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gwern comments on Open Thread, August 1-15, 2012 - Less Wrong
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FMA fans: for no particular reason I've written an idiosyncratic bit of fanfiction. I don't think I got Ed & Al's voice right, and if you don't mind reading bad fanfiction, I'd appreciate suggestions on improving the dialogue.
It's close enough for the purpose of the story. I could tell who was saying what the whole time. I don't think Ed would be that certain about ethics, he never seemed that way in the show (I never read the manga), and it seemed like you were trying to hard to force his hotheadedness.
To me, the sign of poorly written fanfiction is when the author tries to shoehorn details from the original work even when its not necessary. There wasn't any reason for the gate to be involved, and the Elrics didn't really have cause to connect the philosopher's reference to the doorway between worlds. They wouldn't assume that everyone who mentions a gate has knowledge of human alchemy. Al also didn't need to mention their father to express recognition of the tale, and The joke about needing to eat didn't fit the tone you set up.
The dialogue was more awkward than anything. It seemed like the story really had nothing to do with FMA so you tried to add as many arbitrary references and character quirks from the series as you could to strengthen the connection, instead of letting the characterization flow naturally from their place in the story. It wasn't terrible as far as fanfiction goes, but it wasn't great.
Anyway, that's my two cents, hope it helps.
Those are good points, thanks for all the advice.
With the gate, I was trying to provide a sort of 'hook' and nudge readers towards thoughts about multiple words; I wondered if it was too clumsy, but you pointed to it and so I guess so. I'll remove that. Also tone down the exclamation marks. I think the dinner joke makes sense in context, though: every conversation is a tug of war, and the reaction to abstraction is concreteness and vice versa... hm, actually what would make more sense is pointing out 'how does he get back'.
(I don't know how good the revised version is; the story's pretty personal, and I doubt anyone but me appreciates the three levels of interpretation, but then, I didn't write it for anyone but me.)