An interesting side effect of writing so much in Scar's POV is the very consistent through-line that alchemy and racism are inseparable.
What thinks and feels like a human but isn’t?
A great many things, answered alchemy.
And maybe that was the sickness at its foundational center. Not power over energy, matter, or even decay, but the right to declare inhumanity by its own hand. The power of a state. The power of an army.
It could be strongly argued that alchemy is the belief system of Amestris, its own cultural religion. Even Marcoh calls it so. There's a consistent cognitive dissonance when alchemy and its practitioners/adherents/believers come into contact with someone whose very person has been touched by alchemy -- An attached soul, a chimera, a homunculus. These people, undeniably thinking and feeling and possessing of a will of their own, are stripped of the social privilege of humanity. This is alchemy's doing.
Reframing this world, this society, these conflicting ideas through Scar's eyes makes the failed logic of our original POV character (Ed) all the more obvious. It makes his personally convenient, inconsistent notation of what is human and what isn't (Al is, Sloth isn't) all the more obviously bogus.
It feels so obvious that denoting all of this in my own text feels condescending, but I wanted to talk about it a bit because it's so interesting, so I opened discord and was immediately hit with this tweet about the official FMA mobile game:
And I just. You really can't make this shit up.
"Hey guys I think maybe alchemy and racism are thematically inseparable within this universe?"
Official FMA media: "FIRE COMBO THE SHIT OUT OF FREEDOM FIGHTERS FROM A COLONIZED ETHNIC MINORITY!! ISN'T ROY SO FUCKING COOL?? GIVE US GACHA MONEY."
It's a bad joke. It really, really is.