Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-14138255-20160807005311/@comment-172.58.216.135-20160928170953

ChishioKunrin wrote: And I don't really know how to feel about the Semblance thing, though we have seen evidence that high amounts of negative emotion can cause someone to lose control of their Semblance. Pyrrha was experiencing emotional turmoil and, for a moment, accidentally used her Semblance to warp her weapon and shield. It's possible that, when Ruby was running from the Nevermore and Death Stalker in volume 1, she didn't use her Semblance because she was too scared to. That warping of Milo and Akuou I always interpreted as some kind of stress-and-guilt-induced hallucination; stress from the Ozluminati's revelations and the decision asked of her, and guilt from her accidental using her Semblance on Jaune a few minutes earlier. As for that Ruby example, a simpler and more likely explanation (Occam's Razor incoming) explanation is that, rather than her fear causing her to lose access to her Semblance as you're suggesting, she was probably just so scared that the idea of using her Semblance didn't occur to her.

-He who is AWESOME