Is it... bad if I don't like writing gruesome elements into fic?

It's not that I want to try and sugarcoat everything, just... well, I do take at face value that this is a fantasy world. I get more enjoyment out of imagining what ways this would be different from the real world than what similarities I can pull into it, at least on the physical plane.

Really, I even don't see it so much as "realism" anymore because physical nastiness of this degree is so far removed from most writers and readers. We tend to see it as something weird and fascinating when, if we're going for pure realism, it would be much more mundane. I mean, nobody wants to write about X having a cold, unless it's played for comedy or it takes a lethal turn (in which case you're writing about death, not a cold).

I dunno... I would say I'm just a wimp, but I don't think I get squicked that easily. I just think that there is a tendency to take "realism" and turn it out as The Dung Ages. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheDungAges)

tl;dr, realism is a very subjective term and I personally equate it more with being boring than being icky.