I don't think that's correct. If it were holy effects would also wear off, and they aren't mentioned to do so. I think that as long as an item was saturated in love it will say saturated in love until something desecrates that love in some way.
Umm, just to point out something - the quote thing didn't quite work for your reply there. It has you quoting me when Nyarlathotep5150 was the one who said that True Love would wear out.
I, on the other hand, think that emotions might be written over. That if a psychopath wears a wedding ring that was imprinted with True Love that his hate would overwrite the other emotion.
But in Proven Guilty Harry was able to find areas of intense fear were the fetches were feeding. And in Dead Beat Mortimer was able to search all of Chicago for necromantic energy. So a spell to find strong sites of love wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility.
Fear taken to a high level by a supernatural thing feeding. Necromantic energy. Neither sounds much like True Love.
Love rarely has anything to do with sites. It rarely stains on the world. What we are talking about is assessing the emotional level of everyone in the city - most of whom would be behind thresholds. It looks as if we differ over whether this is possible.
And magic isn't even needed to find an item that is likely to be wrapped in love. All you need for that is a good contacts roll. Then you just use magic to see if the rumors are true.
I can just see how that would go...
"Well, my parents love each other so all of their of their gifts to each other will count... WTF DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T SENSE TRUE LOVE ON THE TOASTER MY DAD GAVE MOM FOR THEIR ANIVERSARY!!!"
Or
"WTF do you mean that something from my mom doesn't count! She does too love me!"
There's love, everyday love, and then there's True Love. Jim Butcher has defined it as a two way street where both sides would sacrifice everything for the other - like O'Henry's
"The Gift of the Magi". He has even said that you don't have it between parents and children because children can't return that level of love. The average couple would have their ups and down, maybe having periods of True Love, but most couples can't maintain that level of love.
Here are a few examples of gifts that can be turned into weapons of the top of my head. Golf clubs, kitchen ware for those couples that love to cook, a classic car if your partner is into that kind of thing, actual weapons if they re a collector, musical instruments, and the list goes on. True not all of these items make the best weapons but many them are at least serviceable.
I can't see most of those things as being an expression of love. I'd say that the food might have love baked into it, but I have difficulties seeing it attached to the cookware.
Most of the items that the books have talked about aren't mere gifts but symbols. A wedding ring. A rose exchanged between lovers. A scarf that was knitted with love (not one that was bought, but one that was handmade for a loved one) that is worn only because your lover made it for you - that's something special.
I can see handmade items, things that someone laboured over because they loved someone, holding love more than a gift bought in a store. Or something that is an everyday symbol of that love. But the average gift... no, I can't see True Love as something that marks everything exchanged by two lovers.
That can apply to any catch. The fact that a character can potentially avoid the catch does not invalidate it.
Not really. An antique set of golf clubs ,or any other such item, given as an anniversary gift would be much easier to get a hold of and you wouldn't have to answer any awkward questions from the police. Or to put it another way. I've have seen many more objects wrapped in true love in my life than mini-guns or grenades.
This is where we are going to have differ. I don't see the average anniversary gift as being marked by True Love. Now one that is cherished everyday, that every time you look at it you think of your loved one, that I can see.
Because if everything that was ever exchanged between lovers was imprinted with True Love then White Court vampires couldn't walk down the street. That guy's hat was a gift from his wife, and that guy's jacket was too, and her husband bought her those boots, and... No, I can't see it happening.
It looks like we are going to have to agree to differ on this one. I see items that are imprinted with True Love as being rare and hard to use as weapons, to the point where it would be easier to get AK47s and mini-guns than finding something that can exploit the "True Love" catch. That finding something that can exploit that catch is so hard to do that the catch might as well not be there - hence it being worth zero points.
After all, if items imprinted with True Love were that common then Lara would never pick up any wedding ring. She isn't scarred from countless rings - just "the wrong" one. And True Love can't be that common or the White Court wouldn't have many victims to choose from.
Richard
