I think the toxic discourse is largely a release issue rather than a genuine writing problem.
I am someone who played chapter 5 and didn't personally enjoy the Suselle scene. But!! I did the important part of Media literacy of actually removing my biases and looking at how I felt about Suselle after 3 and 4 and it made me realise something.
If you look at 3 4 and 5 together rather that with a year of bias built up, you can better see how the way Susie and Noelle are characterised and how it leads to the resultant Chapter 5 scene. I was so annoyed with the way things resulted in I didn't properly question if it made sense and when I did, it actually did. Noelle obviously having been caring about crushing on susie for so long as well as how lonely Susie feels making her latch onto any genuine affection she is given makes their quick pairing a natural progression of what has been introduced. Not liking how something played out doesn't make it bad or implausible.
I think toby intended 3 4 and 5 to come out at once for this exact reason among others and what we are seeing in terms of toxicity is the fallout of that change in release schedule. And when I realise that, I began to actually enjoy the story itself more even though it didn't match what I previously wanted!
TL/DR: I didn't enjoy the scene at first but that doesn't make the scene poorly written and the release schedule exacerbated the conflation between the 2 imo.
Art by @im_vess on X: