I think it's the fact that he can see them that the stories grew from that. Nick is the personification of centuries of stories about men and women who could see their true form and thus wesen turned Grimms into legends/monsters that hide under their children's beds and so growing up to fear them. It doesn't help that Grimms are raised to kill wesen without conscience, Nick being the exception, at the beginning. In almost a thousand years, it's easy to hype the grimm sight into more than it was by claiming it's seeing into the darkness because of fear.
Since the hiatus, I have been thinking about what Conrad said about Grimms being a part of the wesen world. Since S1 we've been lead to believe that Grimms are a sort of Police force/population control (good guys) against wesen but it has become difficult for me to see them that way because they are killers by nature, hunting and killing wesen wherever they went. In any other story they would be the bad guys but the trope has been subverted by making a typical antagonist into a protagonist because the show is about a specific Grimm. By being exposed to Nick we are blinded to the horror that is a grimm's life. They are murderers but we can't see that because of the narrative pushed before us that Nick is a good guy and this is a fantasy. If you took away the element of fantasy, we'd be faced with the reality that Grimms are essentially serial killers, which makes reapers elements of mainting balance, Grimms hunt wesen, reapers hunt Grimms and on and on. I actually wish they'd used Grimm reapers more now that I think about it. This isn't to say that all the wesen killed are innocent victims but we know not everyone is a criminal or unrepentant killer/rapist and whatever horrible thing out there because we don't paint all people with the same brush and treat people as individuals but Grimms don't seem to have this ability in them until it's forced upon them by circumstances.
Since the hiatus, I have been thinking about what Conrad said about Grimms being a part of the wesen world. Since S1 we've been lead to believe that Grimms are a sort of Police force/population control (good guys) against wesen but it has become difficult for me to see them that way because they are killers by nature, hunting and killing wesen wherever they went. In any other story they would be the bad guys but the trope has been subverted by making a typical antagonist into a protagonist because the show is about a specific Grimm. By being exposed to Nick we are blinded to the horror that is a grimm's life. They are murderers but we can't see that because of the narrative pushed before us that Nick is a good guy and this is a fantasy. If you took away the element of fantasy, we'd be faced with the reality that Grimms are essentially serial killers, which makes reapers elements of mainting balance, Grimms hunt wesen, reapers hunt Grimms and on and on. I actually wish they'd used Grimm reapers more now that I think about it. This isn't to say that all the wesen killed are innocent victims but we know not everyone is a criminal or unrepentant killer/rapist and whatever horrible thing out there because we don't paint all people with the same brush and treat people as individuals but Grimms don't seem to have this ability in them until it's forced upon them by circumstances.