[member="Cathul Thuku"]
In her case, it's that the character is 'extraordinary', by which I mean that it's fairly improbable.
Ultimately all characters go to great lengths to avoid being broken ICly, but realistically speaking, they absolutely
should fail at some point. Nobody is so mentally and physically strong that they can avoid circumstances that will push that endurance beyond their limits: heck, anyone who attempts it is likely to end up broken from the attempt. You've heard the oft-repeated quote that "Depression is not a failure to be strong, but a result of being strong for too long"? That much applies here: the more resolutely stubborn and resistant you are to a proper breaking, the more broken you'll actually be when you finally (and inevitably) succumb. And you
will.
And, frankly, a character that never experiences a breaking is just a two-dimensional pointless exercise: everyone, at some time in their lives, will end up broken. Might be early on, as they experience disillusionment with a world that was supposed to be more magical. Might be when they hit adulthood, and they realise everything they'd looked forward to in their lives was actually much the same as that which they experienced in childhood, with the added burden of responsibilities on top. It might be the heartache of loss, bereavement, loneliness. It might be that they never quite fulfilled the potential they strove for, or that they worked so hard to achieve. Can even happen late in life, when they look back and experience utterly destructive levels of regret and anxiety over things they didn't do, or over things they did do but wish they hadn't. These things help to flesh out a character, make them more 'human', and exposes both their flaws and their strengths. A character that resists and/or never experiences this is worth absolutely
nothing in the long run, and defies belief. It's bad writing, put bluntly.
That said, it can be done very, very badly, too: a person who suffers a traumatic injury for the space of a thread or two and then miraculously heals, a being who does not get what they want, or finds their beliefs questioned, and yet persists in their actions or beliefs as they had before, and so on. A breaking absolutely creates change: sometimes it's a traumatic, soul-destroying change, at other times, it's a positive change, a means of motivating you towards effective character growth. Ideally, this has to be shown throughout all of your writing: we're not talking small potatoes, but something that eats at and attacks the character in such a fundamental way that it's
always there. If I see a character supposedly broken that isn't walking around with something considerably different than they had before, I'll chalk that up to bad writing, too. Because
it is.
Oh, and by the by: someone who goes out of their way to avoid a good breaking
is already broken, because their fear of that pain and anguish has effectively taken over, which in itself prompts a dramatic behavioural change that follows them around for the rest of their lives, unless they finally face up to it and submit to a breaking (in whatever form you're working on). The only invariable problem with such an approach is that the writer in question tends to forget that this is the case, and suddenly stops acting like they're running from themselves, yet without the trauma of a proper breaking. That, too, is bad writing.
A breaking is pivotal to most character's development, much as is true of all of us: I daresay everyone's experienced a breaking at one time or another, and likely will do so again in the future.
That's as it should be. Those that do are the ones that will truly grow and flourish. Those that don't...well, they'll stagnate, victims of their own fear and insecurities. So sayeth the Sith! It's pretty much our number one rule
