
Elisheva:
It takes years for abused women to recover and we never do entirely; we're always at risk for falling back into those known patterns. I'm as critical of this in het chick lit, rom coms and dramas. BL doesn't get a free pass just because it's handsome young men.
Not you making me think on a weekend; seriously though I am glad that you did share your opinion. It made me actually pull up the theory of love page and skim through the supporting cast, reviews and comments to re - familiarise myself with the elements of it. Now I fully understand where you are coming from and I do find truth in what you are saying. Third was emotionally abused and manipulated. I think what made most of us just view Khai as a disgusting guy, for lack of a better word, was that it involves both men and not a female and a man. Persons would more call out abuse if it was physical and not emotional in this case. There would have been a lot of heated opinions if a woman was being treated as how Third was being treated; which is not right; abuse is abuse no matter gender, race or age.
In terms of how it was resolved and if it was sufficient, that solely depends on the mindset of the viewer. Khai went through a couple episodes tasting his own medicine; having his own feelings hurt (rightfully so) and did a lot of groveling. Keeping in mind that the series only has 12 episodes, the realistic time that change of a person requires would not be able to be written in with that time frame; unless they either cut out some of the abuse in earlier episodes which would have made it less potent, defeating the purpose of this discussion, or they could have added in a time jump which would not really be effective because we are watching it in real time so even though it would be a jump in time on screen for us it would have just been one episode ago Khai was an abuser and now he is a saint, there would have been a clear disconnect, at least for me, and it would have angered me and I am sure others, if I remember the atmosphere around the series at the time right. Therefore I believe the course taken by the writers for the resolution was the best way to go about it given the time constraint; it is not a 30 + episode kdrama.
As it relates to breaking the "Sacred Rules of BL", this would not have been digested by the BL fans well, myself included. Would it have been powerful? Again depends on the viewer's mindset and their experiences that have shaped that mindset. One could argue that Third ending up with P'Un was just him responding to P'Un's kindness which he has been deprived of by Khai and so he is confusing this kindness with love and he does not actually love P'Un in a romantic sense. Of course there are counter arguments to this and that is the beauty of debates and opinions; however what is to be taken into account is that we can argue this but we are arguing from an external point, we are not Third so we can't speak for his feelings we can speak of them but certainly not for them. At the end of day if Third feels as if Khai would have done enough to earn his love then who are we disagree. I have only seen the "Sacred Rules of BL", broken one time and that was in My Toxic Lover which continued into Worth the Wait (I feel like I just did product placement loll GMMTV better hire me Lolll) and this series had the time to execute this, but this is the closest to breaking the rules I have ever seen considering the main lead ended up being with a support character instead of the other main.
It is important to really analyse what we watch even though what we discover might not be ideal and sometimes when it is not ideal it gives the series a sense of realism. I can take this same abuse argument and question a lot of fan favourite series. The most recent in discussion is Addicted the series. There are some questionable scenes in there which is why people were objecting to the age of the actors selected for the Thai re-make.
All in all to say I appreciate your in depth thinking on Theory of Love and I do agree with the abuse aspect and it is really up to the psyche of the viewer how they handle it and feel about the resolution of the series.