>>103252616It's a "push" when a person thinks of the message first and the characters second.
For example, Rebecca Sugar has always wanted more lesbians in cartoons. She had that idea in mind prior to anything else and then pushed PB + Marcy and made Steven Universe as a response to that idea. She didn't make SU characters and then figure out later that it would fit the story if they were all gay, she purposely made characters that would push for more lesbian representation.
Let's take Gaston and LeFou. In the original movie, the artists and writers thought it would be funny for LeFou to fanboy over Gaston after scripts and rewrites and thinking it would just be funny for popular jock to have a little obsessive dweeb follow him around. You could say LeFou was gay for Gaston, but it was never a push. It always felt like it was just the right direction to take that comical duo.
The remake decades later in a "more progressive" era, however, had writers and directors who are all itching to push with representation in mind. So with that already in mind, they scoured for how they could do it and say LeFou and added some, "HE'S DISNEY'S FIRST GAY CHARACTER!" angle to it. Even though he was clearly ready to bend for Gaston in the original.
That's the difference between a push and something that fits the story. Like, I really don't know if Ruby and Sapphire having a Catholic-based wedding (It's not an Earth wedding, not every country celebrates weddings like that) is exactly "fitting the story" of a boy caught in the middle of an old alien war.
