Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-1860621-20140815015907/@comment-9090085-20140824043025

Grimllock wrote: her semblance is probably more so related to anger than taking damage, as her eyes changed color in vol 1 ep 8 when everyone kinda showed up at her and the insanity was driving her crazy but she didn't take any damage I'd say her eyes changing color is a side-effect of her semblance entering it's active state; note in The Emerald Forest(v1 ep6) when she fights the Ursas(Ursai?) her eyes change color but her hair doesn't glow - and her blows don't seem much stronger then before her eyes changed color. (basically, her semblance activated, but she didn't have any energy stored up, so she didn't get much of a boost)

Yang has a very unusual semblance: Unlike most people, she has no conscious control over when it activates - it responds to her emotions, not to her will. She has eyes that change color when she's using her powers(Only Cinder and Neo have been shown thus far to have that quirk, and they can use it whenever they want). Part of her body glows when her power is active(only Sun displayed anything similar, and only for a second).

I honestly feel that the odd-ness of Yangs Semblance ties into the quote at the start of her trailer: "Scathing eyes ask that we be symmetrical, one sided and easily processed. Yet every misshapen spark's unseen beauty is greater than its would be judgement."

Yang's Semblance combines a number of side-effects that most people only have one of at best, and is uncontrollable; she may very well have hurt people in the past because she hadn't yet adopted her perpetually happy outlook to keep her semblance from running amok. She's better now, obviously, but when she was a kid, she might have been deemed "misshapen" for that.