Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-24116544-20131101010026/@comment-3387274-20131119123252

Actually, they changed their minds. The trailers are now entirely canon. Also of note, Weiss's semblance is just her runes. everything else including the ice, the tree blasting, etc, is just dust. We also see the giant spider literally firing a laser beam using what appears to be a dust effect without the slightest possiblity of semblance, and don't even mention Penny. So funnily enough, yes, Dust is literally something you can just use to laser beam random stuff with.

Chaneling aura through a weapon, though, is not a necessary part of this, and Ruby has a gun mechanism she can use to detonate the stuff anyway, so there'd be little point.

And what could customisable mean, if not swap out a few parts to get a different effect? We already know from Red that changing clips of amunition completely alters the way the firing behaves, so Ben's note about variable payloads is actually canon.