like the reason I give out hot takes in this fandom is not so much to stop debates, especially not from people who actually have more merit to talk about these things than I do.
I can understand why certain decisions would invoke debate, such as the choice to create "Avatarian". The problem is that most of the "discourse" the fandom rolls out is literally nothing more than dogma, which is then spread around like the plague. I'm talking about dogma such as "Bryke stopped using cultural consultants, now they only use chatgpt, that's why they stopped using an Asian aesthetic and Seven Havens is just generic sci-fi rather than the super unique, authentic Chinese-coded fantasy world".
Like, I wanna be happy for you and let you finish, but you just conflated several unrelated and unsupported assumptions together. If y'all had anything to say AFTER you got the facts of it right, then your critique would have a lot more weight.
I don't know the whole context for that one "according to chatgpt" on one of the early, non-final Tagah concept ideas. I can understand why it causes some concern. I do, however, know that many of the initial concepts for other characters were not made within the core Avatar Studio, but commissioned from artists to give them "headcanon ideas with very little context":
Also, Bryan explained at SDCC, that they created Avatarian themselves after discussions with cultural consultants: according to their conclusions, it doesn't make sense to write solely in Chinese given how diverse their cultural inspirations are.
Furthermore, they have talked about how they have underserved certain cultural inspirations, particularly Indian. Which is why that inspiration is heightened in the AATLA film and Seven Havens, including making new characters that are coded as South Asian.
There is no evidence they have stopped caring about being respectful. The two least well-represented cultures in ATLA were the Air Nomads and the Watertribes. Now there is a movie about Air Nomad culture, and the one other series that has been confirmed is one about the Watertribes.
In other interviews, they talked about how the visual style in Seven Havens is partly based on French surrealist art, partly based on 90's anime and Japanese woodblock print. They are not "getting rid of" their authentic cultural inspirations, just they stopped (over-)relying on a Chinese/Sinospheric aesthetic.
Again, you are absolutely in the right to debate and critique all this. There's many fans with more merit to do so than me, but no matter your background or knowledge, your critique is going to be completely hollow if you do not base it on the simple, actual facts of why someone made a certain production or artistic choice.