To be honest, my intention here was never for Mitch to be seen as a self insert, nor for werewolves to be an allegory for homosexuality - they're a nebulous 'other' in society, maybe, but the goal here isn't to say that werewolves can never be dangerous, nor that they weren't the source of the veterans' lasting trauma (or rather, part of it). It's to explore why it is that marginalized people can find themselves drawn to figures that are considered villainized 'others' by society - whether they be werewolves, witches, or anything else (though the former two are what the story explores with Mitch and Birdie respectively). Werewolves are just another one of these 'others' in the eyes of the village - but they're not inherently good and not inherently bad - just something that exists and which the characters of the story don't really understand.
With regards to the folklore thing, the story of Damartos was both meant as a nod to the original story of the greek Damarchus which much of the in-universe folklore surrounding werewolves was based on, and to show what the in-universe understanding of werewolves is - and how it varies between people with there being no one 'true' version (with Mitch, Leda, and Abel all bringing up different splinters of this same story). At the end of the day, it's just another one of the stories Mitch's father told him in an attempt to pass down a moral of some kind.
Now, ultimately all of this is a matter of my intention - how well these things came across in the story is up to the reader, and I'm well aware of some of the ways in which these could have been improved (the specific callout of Thalis saying werewolves are 'unnatural' is something I didn't intend to be a metaphor for homosexuality, but I certainly can understand how one could get that impression given its similarity to real homophobic remarks). I suppose this is an inherent part of working under jam constraints, and of writing stories in general.
Regardless, I'm glad you enjoyed the story in spite of these issues, and I'm always glad to receive feedback! Honestly, stuff like the lack of sprite poses, the anachronisms and the lackluster "no transformation ending" (which is moreso a matter of me just forgetting to explicitly signpost it as the "no sex" option) is something I'm already interested in changing when the jam rating period ends.