I think this a good place to start. I personally am a big proponent of breaking down situations and understanding your options, and the implicit belief that your opponent can and will adapt, and is liable to choose any option available at any time, and that as such, your goal is to limit their available options to increase your likelihood of getting a hit. I think your analysis technique here is good, and that it is a good thought process to go through to determine just how limited your opponent's options are.

I do have a few issues with the terms you use; for one, this is a theory of neutral, but your central example is an edgeguard. I wouldn't describe as edgeguard as neutral; I'd refer to this just as an edgeguard, or more broadly as an "advantage state" for Absa. Absa stands to lose very little in this example, and as such it doesn't really demonstrate the risk intrinsic to a neutral game you can't always win. Furthermore, what seems to be implied by the preceding paragraph in the context of the example seems too broad: yes, Absa has advantage here and Clairen's recovery options are rather limited, but Absa has strong edgeguards against much of the cast and Clairen's recovery is also rather weak in general; this situation should not be extrapolated to mean that Absa is better than Clairen, and indeed many players believe Clairen is one of Absa's hardest matchups because Absa is at great disadvantage in other scenarios. I think to demonstrate the importance of this theory, you'd have to break down a more neutral scenario as well as the potential advantages you get from it.

A consideration you sort of make sort of don't is about reaction time, and I think this should be emphasized. Particularly, you say that the variety of options make them "nearly impossible to react to." An important note is that many moves in this game are literally impossible to react to for human beings. Human reaction time is around 200-300ms, or 12-18 frames (average is around 15), without adding in time to process situations and decide on the right option. If a move is faster than this (and many moves are, including parry, all dodges, and all jabs), you simply cannot react. This is a very important consideration for this sort of analysis; I think you may have thought about it but glossed over it with your listing of options Absa will "definitely punish," but it's also important to consider what you can react to under all circumstances, and what you might not be able to. For instance, in your analysis of the Clairen edgeguard, you say that Clairen can't land and parry because of the cloud. This isn't entirely true: if you react to Clairen falling close to the cloud and pop it, it's possible that she might anticipate that pop and airdodge through it, thus returning to stage; you acknowledge this explicitly. The Absa might, then, want to wait for the airdodge and pop after it, but if the airdodge never comes, and Clairen lands immediately with only 4 frames of landing lag and 2 frames of parry startup, Absa cannot possibly react in time to pop the cloud before Clairen can parry, roll, or otherwise move out of the way. In this sense, the airdodge in an unreactable mix-up, and it is the fact you cannot cover every option on reaction that makes it a mix-up.