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.

I'm not sure she can. The short story this happened in had a couple instances of her trying to talk to Carlos about Winter stuff, and being unable to say anything other than pickup lines. Harry asked some things about how she's doing with the job in SG and she said she couldn't tell him, literally, despite him being the Knight.

Any sort of meaningful apology to Carlos would require an explanation of why the mantle forced her to attack him. That seems like a more serious Winter secret than anything she wanted to say earlier and was blocked from, so she probably cannot speak about it.

Dunno really. If one of basic qualities of Winter Lady a big secret. Is it even... possible for it to be a secret. It's like Maiden, Mother, Crone mythology - any wizard with decent knowledge would get it. If so... that's really weird.

Now of course Immortal dies in Halloween secret somehow is kept top secret, which also I consider with lot of doubt.

It's clear from PT/BG that neither Carlos told Dresden about it, nor Molly tried to dunno apologize for incident.
It's possible Carlos reported to White Council - which could be a reason they are now quite harsh on Dresden - his warlock apprentice turned Sidhe and ripped their Warden to shreds

True love is the magical mechanism that establishes the protection, just like casting a ward. And like a ward it remains until broken or taken down.

But then why it's enough to be really brave to burn Malvora out

Having sex with your True Love at a later time rebuilds the ward. I imagine Thomas and Justine had to refrain from body contact very shorty after completing the act as the ward came back up.

Problem with this is - WOJ states sex is not necessary to estabilish ward.

Could be - but even that deserved more resolution than we've got.

Indeed, I've been wondering that as well, and I can think of none.  Yes, we are told that most of the younger Wardens look up to Harry and agree with him on many counts, but nothing about secrets shared with Harry.

I'd say Carlos as young Warden has bit less secrets usually.
I mean he barely graduated when we meet him, and then in White Night already Dresden is quite obviously hiding information

If Thomas was Nemfected and did it as part of a plan, but was hurt too much and was not able to use his Awesome Walker Powers before getting stuck in coffin, I'd way way prefer it.

Basically rather than one Justine make it live five people influenced by bilocating Walker - making this Xanatos Gambit more believable.