quick update. didnt manage to test the game on sonoma 14.8.2 but did manage to on monterey 12.7.6 where it displayed the same error.
for whatever reason, the game seems to run fine from the renpy launcher, so im unable to pin down what the issue might be on the game's end. from what i've seen, this seems to be issue with a few renpy games on mac. im really sorry that i couldnt find any fixes aside from running from the renpy launcher.