"We offered you power" - did Buffy make a mistake?

[Taake]

So I was thinking about the season 7 episode "Get it done", just to recap - Buffy travels through mystical means to the Shadowmen who created the First Slayer, looking for their help to defeat the First.

These are some key snippets from the conversation she has with them;

SHADOW MAN: We cannot give you knowledge. Only power.


SHADOW MAN: This will make you ready for the fight
BUFFY: By making me less human?
SHADOW MAN: This is how it was then. How it must be now.
SHADOW MAN: This is all there is.


BUFFY: You think I came all this way to get knocked up by some demon dust? I can't fight this. I know that now. But you guys? You're just men. (rips her chains out of the ground) Just the men who did this...to her. Whoever that girl was before she was the First Slayer.


Buffy later on to Willow:
BUFFY: I think I made a mistake.
WILLOW: What?
BUFFY: Those men that I met"”you know, the shadow men? They offered me more power, but I didn't like the loophole.
WILLOW: So, you turned it down? It's OK, Buffy. We'll get by. We always do.
BUFFY: I don't know. They showed me...


But what always gets me when I watch this episode is that - while it's both admirable and understandable that Buffy fiercely wants to protect her human side - is it an unwise choice? Isn't it indeed a mistake on her part? Would further Slayer powers have given her an edge in the fight against the First?
What would it have meant for subsequent Slayers? No doubt they're somehow mystically linked, would Slayers after Buffy have been more powerful too? Less human? Would the Potentials when she shared her power with them? Would she have needed to do so?

What do you guys think? How do you feel about this?
Are you as repulsed by Buffy to know where the Slayer's strenght originates from?
Do you think Buffy made the right choice even considering the costs? (she didn't have the scythe et al at this point after all)

 

[white avenger]

Even though it might have seemed so at first, Buffy's decision to refuse the Shadow Men's offer to increase her was the correct one. Assuming that she had done so, she would have probably been able to feat Caleb when they first met. By doing so, she would have almost certainly not have located or recovered the Scythe, because a victorious Buffy would not have been thrown out of her own home and would have had no reason to return to the vineyard. Without doing that, she would never have found the Scythe. Without the Scythe, Willow could never have worked the spell activating all of the Potentials, even if it would have occurred to Buffy under those circumstances.

Ultimately, if Buffy had taken the Shadow Men's offer, there would have been Super Buffy, Faith, Spike, and a handful of frightened, totally human Potentials to be overrun by an army of Bringers and ubervamps. Instead, with the power of the Scythe and the magic that Willow was able to invoke by using it, Buffy had a small army of Slayers at her disposal, whose combined power was far more than Buffy could ever have possessed on her own.

 

[kittenpoker]

Really good question Taake!! I agree it's hard to say - but ultimately I think White Avenger is right - not just because of how things turned out but - and maybe this is just me - there was a very strong rape undertone to the "spell" or whatever of enhancing her powers letting some demon essence into her. Strong sense of violation - her chained - the demon entering her in a sexual way. I think buffy is absolutely right - the first slayer - it seemed had no choice this was done to her. Buffy - if anything is all about empowerment. She has a choice. She knows this. She uses this power. And it is power. She decides. And her answer is no. Right or wrong (and I agree, as it unfolds it turns out to be right) I think the most important thing here is that she used her true power.