Until I see it on the books, I won't believe it.
Distrust of WOJ. I like it.
It's a pretty convenient ward, if a ward it is. Thomas banged his way through Dead Beat. That should have killed it. Yet by White Knight despite the fact that Thomas has been doing every "she" he comes in contact with, it means not one wit.
Thomas can fuck off his own ward, but it's not like ward of Justine is like ultimately dependent of his own. So Justine can stay faithful and keep True Love ward around. An anyway - if they go intimate it can be rebuilt for them both who knows how fast. After all Thomas was not burned by own True Love, but by Justine's - otherwise his own True Love would kill her.
Jim Butler was only 33 when Blood Rites came out.
Maybe that's why he changed his mind. (Or maybe because he decided it's kinda stupid considering anti-Skavis and anti-Malvora defenses are way way different.)
But then...
I think Jim came up with the idea, it fit perfectly into the story he was writing at the time and went with it. Ignoring that one can have sex without love, one can be raped, one can truly love without sex, one can even be unfaithful for a lot of complicated reasons and still truly love one person, which as the series has gone on variations of these scenarios create problems for the story line. And yes, it is possible that Harry still truly loves both Susan and Murphy though both are dead, and always will... So is he still protected?
With all those exceptions and stuff - somehow this original in many ways mechanical variant of protection were less baffling than going with true love in like philosophy area. But yeah I think ultimately reason for it was to estabilish way out for Inari, and way to torture Thomas a bit.
(Although I think sex without love as not-working was estabilished anyway).
I think true love is not enough, it is magic after all. It has to be confirmed with words or ceremony.
Ritualism. But then would Murphy/Dresden work on Lara?
I think we are overthinking it. It's a convenient thing for literature, it has not need to be related with real life. And since book 1 JB established that in his world, sexual relationships are super powerful and magic related. So, perhaps we can accept the mechanics of True Love as he wants them to be?
I generally agree. My problem in a long run is not connected that much to True Love being problematic concept - but rather than overall it makes mechanics of white vampires bit wonky. Fear-feeders are repelled by true courage, despair-feeders are repelled by true hope - but here we have convoluted wards of intimacy lasting for 7 years which seems to work quite differently. It irks my OCD and love of patterns in a bad way.
If there was no Skavis or Malvora - or if they all were sex-vampires I would care bit less.