Semblances have more than one trait...
Edit: to put commas and have stuff make more sense…
I feel like this has been confirmed in the most recent season. But there is still a bunch of people having arguments about it so Imma put my 2 cents. YES a semblances is one thing. You can only have one semblance… but like a bunch of shit it can come with side effects. Just like you have a cold… You got runny nose a fever and then some. Now I need to go back and look at the other characters that have shown semblances to see what their side effect is but this is what I have for now…. Let me get into it.
RUBY: Can burst into rose petals and move faster than most. The side affect is her being able to use her speed without bursting into rose petals. But when she does ((become rose petals)) that is the true form of her semblance and when she is fastest.
WEISS/WINTER: The glyphs. Their main glyphs give them speed when the glyphs interact with dust the properties change. Their summoning glyph is Their main semblance and what their other glyphs work up too.
YANG: Without activating her semblance, it lets her take the hits and she can start dealing them back with more force. When it is activated is when all the damage that was done manifests into adrenaline letting her deal the damage twice as hard.
NORA: Her semblance truly becomes active after an electrical charge. But as a side effect she has better control over muscle commands giving her superhuman strength on the regular.
QROW: He can turn into a crow that’s main part of the semblance a side effect is his ability to be a bad luck EDIT: crow is not apart of sebalance so bad luck is straight up his sebalance charm.
REN: I call it peace of mind. It calms down the emotions and renders whoever is affected by his semblance invisible to the grimm; Only makes the people affected invisible to grimm not to other people. The side effect can be seen in Ren when he is outside of a battle it calms the emotions on the regular.
EMERALD: Illusions. She is able to manipulate the vision and hearing parts of the mind to give whoever is under her control a realistic image… Side effect… Emotional state. She is able to throw of their mental stability by causing panic rage, or with Amber and the people she steals from a sense of trust or happiness.
((edit to add more))FLYNT: I like to call his the echo. His clones are tangible but they don’t have minds of their own they merely echo what Flynt does, the downside/side effect is it has to keep his full attention or it doesn’t work but that is also a bonus considering that he has the ability to hyper focus enough to make his echos deadly
PYRRHA: polarity magnets!!! Yay! Her side affect is not only controlling it but sensing the metal and adjusting herself to deflect without her semblance. Most prominent in her fight against CRDN.
BLAKE: Shadow has she calls it leaves a solid mimic of herself but idk if anyone else sees it but when she drops a shadow she goes invisible and becomes fast enough, when in close range, you can almost say homegirl is teleporting. She gets a hella speed boost when a shadow is dropped that and she can infuse a shadow with dust.
SUN: I call his outlines. They can be soild but it looks like they aren’t soild until contact with a target. I haven’t gotten to see a side effect but the fact that the outlines don’t stay soild the whole time sun can make more and that’s just cool so this is just me gushing about my ab boy.
((HOW DID I FORGET MY BAE)) GOODWITCH: Telepathy! Not just Telepathy homegirl has mastered her semblance so nasty that she can make items turn back time to their original form/state with little use of her aura! Obviously it can take a toll shown by her trying to rebuild beacon but my boo GOODWITCH IS THE SHIT
Most of the fandom, I have no idea why, think that semblance is a completely different thing that does not draw from Aura. I have seen too many videos and post questioning “Why don’t they use it more?” “The battle could have ended quickly!” “Why wasn’t Qrow’s active all these other times?!”
AURA! Semblances draw the power from Aura. Qrow’s aura was focused on the poison running through him ((another reason I think homie stays drunk to try to nullify the bad luck, even though it doesn’t work too well)) REN couldn’t use it in battle cause 1. his hand would have had to stay on the ground the whole time taking him out of the battle and 2. it takes a lot of Aura and we have seen that he runs out pretty quick.
now if you’ll excuse me… Imma go look at the other characters I haven’t mentioned so I can add more to my worthless post lol
does this count as a ramble…. Imma tag it as a ramble