Maybe I dont have the TRS assingments right - not sure if its tip or ring that carries the send...
I dont see how yousefs/my solution would be any different than using a standard insert cable and only using the send side...leave the return dangling.
What is normalling?
On most consoles it's tip-send, ring-return. Some soundcraft boards are the other way around. You'll run into it occasionally.
Normalling is just the path that a signal takes from one part of the channel strip to the next. Insert jacks are normalling jacks, meaning they are not a part of the signal chain when a cable isn't plugged into them. Once a cable is plugged in the "normal" is broken and now the insert point is part of the signal flow. This is the same concept as plugging in a pair of headphones to a laptop, which in turn kills the speakers.
You're right... Dynamic effects (comps, gates) are usually inserted on individual channels. However other effects (verbs, delays) are fed from an aux send and returned to an aux return or an open channel, so the insert jack is not used (typically).
If you "take" a signal from an insert jack but don't "return" the same signal back, the console won't pass that particular channel to the mix bus. This is bad!
Plugging a cable "one click in" is a way to take a signal without having to return it back to the house console, but it's risky since a slight bump to the cable could result in your main vocals cutting out. This will absolutely get you on the engineer's shit list