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For me effective suspension of disbelief comes down to whether or not the there's internal consistency. It's not about how outlandish or even stupid-on-its-face the impossible element is, it's whether or not the story acts as though it believes in that impossible element. As soon as the story stops believing its own impossibility, then how am I supposed to believe in it?
Example. Magic exists? Okay sure why not, magic exists. Magic exists and it's a blessing to women and a curse to men? Okay sure, that gets explained well so it's all internally consistent. Magic exists and it's a blessing to women and a curse to men but men are still in charge of everything and women are poor downtrodden and oppressed? Wait hang on a second, how does that work? That doesn't make any sense, it should be the other way around if anything, and then I'm yanked out of my suspension of disbelief and I can't enjoy the show anymore.
Or when the show/movie/book/whatever starts piling on new impossible elements and just hand-waves their existence.
Example. Magic exists? Okay sure why not, magic exists. This group of soldiers are the best soldiers in the world? Okay sure why not, there are good soldiers and bad soldiers in our world, that's fine. This group of soldiers are the best soldiers in the world but now they're all going to act unbelievably retarded because we have to further the plot? Wait hang on a second, I thought these were the best soldiers in the world! Why are they acting like mouth-breathing retards now? Oh we're just glossing over that? They're all dead? Wait now they're all alive again? How did they teleport a thousand miles south in a week?
You have to give me grounds to suspend my disbelief, you can't just demand it, but I'll happily suspend my disbelief for any kind of media that tries to work with me. It doesn't even have to be good grounds to suspend my disbelief. Stories rarely go back 10,000 years in time to the first discovery of magic in the world and the painstaking process of discovering why it exists, it's usually just presented as a trusim. Magic exists in this world. And that's fine! That's good enough! Dragons exist in this world, sure why not, sounds fun! As long as there is an iota of "look this is essential to the story so just go with it" or "here is the history of how magic came to be" I'll run with it because that's how you get to enjoy the story. It's laziness that pulls me out.
I keep being amazed by how few authors grasp this. A story should be internally consistent and stick to how things work in the real world except where explicitly noted in the text, as clearly (and largely unambiguously) established in the genre conventions or where the differences are gradually hinted at and revealed.
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