I think the best word I have for this project as a whole is "frustrating." Like everything I've read from you (and I'm not caught up - I've been telling myself that I'm going to read The Theatre tomorrow for two months now. I will after the jam I promise) I am constantly impressed with your creativity and panache in direction, especially when it comes to gore and visual horror generally, but your writing also consistently lacks nuance with the very heavy sociopolitical issues and character beats you seem to be drawn to. To put it more bluntly than some of the other commenters, this was a hot mess. A very stylish hot mess! But a hot mess nonetheless.
Let's get into it:
Implementation of Theme:
Yeah, it's there, or close enough, anyway. I'm not sure if werewolves really count as "folklore" within the context of the universe since they're pretty generally accepted as a common occurrence and have been for quite some time, but we also have the whole Moon Spirit thing going on so there are a couple of angles you could go with. Looking at my notes, there's also a thin frame story element where the prologue is alluding to this whole story now being a legend after the "Werewolf Revolution", and to be honest that element is so underbaked that I forgot about it until just now and it seems like it's tacked on just to make doubly sure you hit the theme requirement. I'm giving you points here with the note that I think other entries did handle this category more effectively.
Presentation:
So, sure, there are some issues here and there, like your characters still tending to have a degree of same-face-syndrome, but the audio/visual direction was exceptional here. As I stated at the top, you clearly have a talent for grisly body horror, and this came through in full force, with the CGs being truly effective, limited as they were compared to some of your other projects. Beyond the visuals, there were some really inspired audio choices, like using the guitar stingers instead of cliche horror strings, and while the title sequence was a bit on the cheesy side for me, I really admired the vision to just send it and I thought the technical execution was great. That said, I feel like a lot of those really slick, stylized choices seemed to fall off after the first act, and I feel like they were a victim of jam constraints. Besides the issues with the story itself, which we'll get to, I think this is another great motivator to keep your scope in check - one of the best things about Route 19 was its ability to pack so many punchy visuals into such a concise, contained story, and I think you're losing out a bit on your greatest strength when you get too ambitious with the scale of your project.
Just want to quickly note as well that, par for the course for your projects, this was impeccably proofread, with only a couple typos that I noticed. For a story this long on such a short timeframe that's commendable and I appreciate the attention to detail.
Story/Writing:
I don't even know where to start with this one. Maybe since I made a point about scale above, let's just begin there.
My general theory towards overt social or political commentary is that while there's nothing wrong with writing about these issues, no one is forcing you to write about them, and if you are going to make the decision to tackle those themes, you need to give them the time, respect, and nuance that they require. This VN tries to hit practically every social malaise of the current era: werewolves are an allegory for homosexuality, but then also maybe the trans experience. But they were also persecuted by the Confederacy and are publicly lynched, so there's racial undertones as well. And on top of that there's a religious conflict between Christianity (taking elements from various Southern evangelical sects as well as LDS, apparently) and the Moon Spirit. And then we also have implied sexual assault, with the female lynching victim... police brutality... conservative attitudes towards general vice (both through the reference to the establishment being "anti-booze" as well as the "War on Werewolves" potentially being reminiscent of the War on Drugs)... mass shootings, and it's all starting to get out of hand. There's a point where this starts to feel less like a coherent narrative and more like a 25,000 word blog rant about everything wrong with society. It's messy, and you're trying to hit so much at once that you don't really have the time to adequately address any of them.
I'll try not to be too repetitive of what others have already said, but the "primary" allegory here, with the gay/trans experience, is a false equivalency, since in the real world, LGBT people are not causing any real harm to the people that discriminate against them, but werewolves here are (when the script wants them to be) legitimately dangerous and actually killing people. There's a sort of chicken/egg issue since it's not really clear where the violence started (the prologue suggests there's like an evil government conspiracy to frame the werewolves, but werewolf prejudice has apparently existed since at least the Civil War, so I don't know how feasible that is), but at least from the casual observer's point of view, people are getting killed by werewolves, and that makes them a real, tangible threat. Like, when Oliver kills Luis' assailant, all the second human sees is a werewolf ripping someone's throat out, and Oliver's actions eventually lead to this person's presumed death as well after their car crashes into the river, and Oliver never really contemplates this.
Everything involving Oliver's alignment with the werewolves is too sudden and too forced. As others have pointed out, there's no choice to begin with as "become a werewolf forever or suffer a horrible fate where the 'normal' werewolves will kill you even if the humans don't" isn't a real choice. Furthermore, there's a litany of problems with the scene where Luis takes Oliver to the lynching site. First, from a worldbuilding perspective, there's no way Andy/Oliver would not know about the frequent lynchings in this very public place, so the scene comes across as contrived and didactic. From a thematic perspective, lines like "The humans held a barbeque where they tried wolf meat" characterize the humans as almost cartoonishly evil, and this, along with Luis' insistence that "humans are filth" and that Oliver essentially must join the werewolves despite his pending "choice", come across as indoctrination and intentional radicalization that isn't markedly different from the religious absolute anti-wolf extremism of the humans, but it's excused because the wolves are the Good Guys in the story.
It's the same kind of issue I pointed out in my comment for Ransom Wilkes - everything is just too black and white. I think there's a much more interesting story here if some plot points are changed. What if there isn't a horrible punishment if you choose not to become a permanent werewolf, and Zizi is making that up to force new wolves onto his side? That would open up so many avenues to explore about how both sides of a conflict can manipulate people, and maybe open up some alternatives where Andy/Oliver gets to truly chose their own path, possibly outside of the two options initially presented to them. This story as it stands just doesn't feel all that interested in giving them that choice.
Following up again on Oliver's initial killings, the VN seemingly barely puts any weight or consequence on them. There's a brief hint of a nod much later, but we cut straight from running away from a double homicide (even if there's an argument for self-defense) to a cutesy romance and a steamy sex scene. This is a jarring and abrupt tonal shift that doesn't fit the weight of just taking someone else's life, and this is repeated later when the story shifts straight from recovering from the protest massacre to the club orgy and Oliver's personal scene with Luis.
This leads into one of my biggest issues with the narrative, which is that almost everything about how the protest is handled feels poorly thought out and, at times, frankly insulting. I genuinely cannot believe that this story, in the year of our Moon Spirit 2026, legitimately has the whole werewolf community be successfully called to action by the guy who just got there like two weeks ago giving a speech. Like... are we really expected to believe that no one thought those things before, that no one had said them, and that no one considered organizing? All of that on top of the fact that there was just a broadcast in which the government very transparently indicated that there would be a full werewolf genocide. Like, the logical result of attempting a peaceful protest in full view of people that openly want to slaughter you is everybody getting slaughtered. That's not a bold, courageous plan that Zizi and Luis should be proudly supporting, it's patently and pointlessly suicidal. I think it only remains as peaceful as it does (which is debatable since Zizi did kick the thing off with arson by setting fire to the market [the text implies that the whole hall is on fire, not just the flag]) for any length of time because the script is conflating real world protests that have an expectation of (at least nonlethal) safety with the universe this story actually takes place in.
Luis' ensuing emotional response therefore also feels contrived, as everyone who participated in the protest agreed to it, despite having more werewolf experience than Oliver, and Luis' subsequent almost immediate shift back to horny after Zizi's funeral feels equally contrived. Following the protest massacre, I was already having flashbacks to a certain other jam entry that severely mishandled a mass casualty event by making it more about characters' interpersonal drama and attraction rather than appreciating the severity of the event itself, and then this VN goes ahead and does its own mass shooting five minutes later. This scene almost feels like a direct response to said other VN, but I don't think it has the result it intended.
There is a very deep irony here in that "courageous hero kills the mass shooter" is a common right-wing fantasy that is depicted almost beat for beat here. Oliver, who has no training and no experience, is somehow the only one in a club full of werewolves that decides to fight back, and singlehandedly successfully intercepts and kills the shooter. This is exacerbated here since all the victims have superhuman physical abilities that should have been able to dispatch the aggressor almost immediately. The way the shooting itself focuses much more on shock value with the bloody scenes and killings themselves rather than reflecting on the actual lives lost and the weight of such a tragedy, combined with the whole hero thing honestly made this sequence feel (unintentionally, I must stress) tasteless to me.
I also agree with the others below that the father was a massive wasted opportunity for thematic nuance. It seems like you were trying for a more nuanced approach than you gave Ransom (the two situations are pretty similar though...) but the ending made all the buildup feel like it was for nothing. Also, to Gatr's point below, I struggle with how Randy's condition even works canonically since he should have been transforming at night, and, if the implication is that Randy killed his wife during his first transformation (which would give him a very interesting perspective on the wolf thing that's never really dissected), that would make him a very late bloomer based on what we know about the process.
There are other minor points I could bring up, like the difficulty of having a conversation on a motorcycle or Oliver being shocked Luis was gay after having the conversation about all types of sex being acceptable with Zizi and Luis (and Luis specifically bringing up gay sex tips), but I think I've gone on for far too long already, so I'll wrap this up.
Creativity:
The vision is there, especially in the style this project is drenched in (maybe more towards the beginning than the end), and I have to give credit for that accordingly. With that said, I think the execution of that vision just requires more focus, intent, and handling mature themes with the requisite maturity they warrant.
Look, I know there was a lot of feedback above (you want to do a long entry, I'm gonna do a long yap), and a lot of it was critical, but I really think if you got more of a handle on these scope, tone, and nuance issues that you'd be able to create something truly spectacular, and I absolutely want that for you.