Chapter 9: Howard's Makeover Attempt
POV: Howard
Howard Wolowitz considered himself a student of human behavior, particularly the subset of human behavior that involved women finding men attractive. He'd read books, analyzed movies, even conducted informal experiments based on pickup artist blogs that promised to crack the code of romantic success. None of it had worked particularly well, but Howard was nothing if not persistent in his scientific approach to dating.
Which was why he'd spent the past week conducting what he privately called "The Stuart Study."
It had started innocently enough—just casual observation during his regular visits to the comic shop. But as Howard watched Stuart interact with female customers, he began to notice patterns that his engineering brain couldn't ignore. Stuart didn't use any of the techniques Howard had studied. He didn't demonstrate higher value or create artificial scarcity. He didn't peacock or neg or deploy any of the sophisticated psychological manipulations that the dating gurus insisted were necessary for success.
Instead, Stuart just... talked to women. Like they were people.
"It's fascinating," Howard explained to Raj and Leonard over lunch at the university cafeteria. "He makes eye contact without staring. He asks about their interests without lecturing. He treats them like human beings with thoughts and opinions worth hearing. It's completely revolutionary."
"It's called normal social interaction," Leonard pointed out dryly. "Most people figured that out in high school."
"Easy for you to say," Howard replied, pulling out a small notebook filled with his observations. "You've had successful relationships. Some of us need to reverse-engineer the process. And Stuart's success rate is statistically impressive."
Raj typed something on his phone and showed it to Howard, who nodded enthusiastically. "Raj makes an excellent point. Stuart's transformation from socially awkward comic shop owner to confident businessman has been accompanied by a corresponding improvement in his interactions with women. There's definitely causation happening, not just correlation."
"Howard," Leonard said with the patient tone of someone who'd had this conversation before, "you can't just copy someone else's personality. Women can tell when you're being fake."
"I'm not copying his personality," Howard protested. "I'm adopting his methodology. Stuart's discovered something that the pickup artist community has missed—authenticity actually works better than manipulation. I'm going to test this hypothesis."
Leonard exchanged a glance with Raj, who shrugged in a way that clearly said 'he's going to do this anyway, might as well let him learn the hard way.'
"Just... try not to make it too obvious," Leonard advised. "Stuart's a nice guy. Don't turn his shop into your personal dating laboratory."
Thursday afternoon, Howard put his plan into action. He'd spent careful time that morning selecting his outfit—instead of his usual colorful turtleneck and decorative belt buckle, he'd chosen a simple button-down shirt and jeans that approximated Stuart's casual-but-put-together aesthetic. He'd practiced relaxed posture in his bedroom mirror, memorized conversation topics about graphic novels and indie comics, even researched recent developments in the publishing industry.
"The Stuart Strategy is ready for field testing," he announced to Raj as they approached the comic shop.
Inside, Stuart was helping a woman in her twenties select something from the manga section. Howard positioned himself nearby, observing their interaction with the intensity of a scientist studying a rare species.
"I'm looking for something with strong female characters," the woman was saying. "But not like, 'strong' in the sense of just fighting a lot. More like psychologically complex, dealing with real issues."
"Have you read Naoki Urasawa before?" Stuart asked, pulling out a volume of Monster. "His character development is incredible—he writes women as actual people with agency and complicated motivations, not just plot devices or eye candy."
The woman's face lit up. "That sounds perfect. I'm so tired of stories where the female characters only exist to motivate the male protagonist or be rescued."
"Right?" Stuart agreed enthusiastically. "Like, women are half the population. Why wouldn't they be half the interesting characters?"
Howard watched this exchange with the fascination of an engineer reverse-engineering a particularly elegant machine. Stuart wasn't trying to impress her or prove his expertise. He was just... listening to what she wanted and helping her find it. Revolutionary.
When the woman moved on to browse other sections, Howard saw his opportunity. Another female customer had entered the shop—early thirties, professional attire, scanning the graphic novel wall with obvious uncertainty.
"Time to deploy the Stuart Strategy," Howard thought, approaching with what he hoped was relaxed confidence.
"Can I help you find something?" he asked, consciously modulating his voice to match Stuart's casual tone.
The woman looked up with a polite smile. "Oh, are you the owner?"
"No, that's my friend Stuart over there. I'm Howard. I'm... studying his methods." Studying his methods? Shit, that sounded creepy. "I mean, I'm here a lot, so I've picked up some knowledge about the inventory."
The woman's smile became slightly more guarded. "Okay."
Howard realized he was already deviating from the Stuart Strategy, but pressed forward. "What kind of stories do you usually enjoy? In books, movies, that sort of thing?"
"Um, literary fiction mostly. Character-driven stuff."
"Excellent!" Howard said, his enthusiasm level spiking well beyond Stuart's natural range. "You should definitely check out the work of Adrian Tomine. His slice-of-life storytelling demonstrates sophisticated narrative techniques that rival any contemporary literary novel, while the visual component adds layers of meaning that pure text can't achieve."
The woman blinked. "I... okay."
Howard could feel the interaction slipping away from him, but couldn't figure out how to course-correct. Stuart made this look effortless, but trying to replicate his approach felt like attempting to perform surgery while wearing oven mitts.
"His use of negative space creates emotional subtext that—"
"You know what," the woman interrupted politely, "I think I'll just browse on my own for a bit. Thanks."
She moved away quickly, and Howard was left standing alone next to the graphic novel wall, wondering where his careful plan had gone wrong.
Twenty minutes and two more failed conversations later, Howard was beginning to suspect that the Stuart Strategy wasn't as simple as he'd initially calculated.
"You seem like you're trying really hard today," one woman observed after Howard had launched into an overly enthusiastic explanation of the artistic significance of Sandman. "Are you feeling okay?"
Another simply walked away mid-sentence when Howard attempted to demonstrate his knowledge of feminist themes in Wonder Woman comics by quoting academic papers he'd read the night before.
By the time Raj pulled him aside with a sympathetic expression and a frantically typed text message, Howard was feeling deflated and confused.
"You're performing, not conversing," Raj's message read. "It's like watching someone do an impression of Stuart rather than actually being interested in helping people."
POV Shift: Stuart
I'd been watching Howard's increasingly desperate attempts at "casual conversation" for the past hour, and it was becoming painful to witness. He was trying so hard to replicate something that couldn't be copied that he'd managed to make himself seem more awkward than usual, which I hadn't thought was possible.
After the last woman had escaped his overly enthusiastic lecture about comic book art theory, I decided to intervene before he completely destroyed his self-confidence.
"Hey Howard," I said, approaching him near the back of the shop where he was standing alone, looking like a scientist whose experiment had just exploded. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"
"Your methodology is flawed," he said immediately. "I followed your conversational patterns exactly, but the results were completely different. Either my observational data was incomplete, or there are variables I failed to account for."
I glanced around to make sure we had relative privacy, then leaned against one of the display cases. "Howard, can I ask you something? When you were talking to those women, what were you thinking about?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, what was going through your head during the conversations? What was your focus?"
Howard considered this with the seriousness of someone analyzing experimental data. "I was focused on implementing your techniques correctly. Maintaining relaxed body language, asking about their interests, demonstrating knowledge without being condescending. But every interaction failed despite following the protocol."
"And there's the problem," I realized. "He's treating human connection like a engineering challenge to be solved rather than an opportunity to actually connect."
"Howard," I said carefully, "there's no protocol. There's no technique to master or strategy to implement. I don't have some secret method for talking to women."
"But your success rate—"
"My success rate comes from actually being interested in what people have to say," I interrupted. "When I'm helping someone find a comic, I'm not thinking about how to impress them or what conversational technique to use. I'm thinking about what they might enjoy reading, what might genuinely make their day better."
Howard's face went through several expressions as he processed this information. "So you're saying the technique is... no technique?"
"I'm saying the point isn't to get women to like you. The point is to actually like women. As people. With their own interests and opinions and experiences that might be different from yours, but are worth learning about."
The concept seemed to hit Howard like a revelation. "But what about confidence? Demonstration of value? All the research says—"
"Forget the research," I said firmly. "Real confidence doesn't come from following scripts or proving how smart you are. It comes from being comfortable with yourself and genuinely interested in other people. You want to know what's attractive? Treating someone like their thoughts matter. Listening when they talk. Caring about their answers to your questions."
Howard was quiet for a long moment, and I could practically see his engineering brain recalibrating everything he thought he knew about social interaction.
"So when you ask what kind of stories someone likes," he said slowly, "you actually want to know the answer?"
"Of course I want to know the answer. That's why I asked."
"And when you recommend something, you're thinking about what they might enjoy, not about how knowledgeable you'll sound?"
"Howard, if I recommend something someone hates, I've failed to help them. Why would I want to do that?"
Something shifted in Howard's expression—a kind of lightbulb moment that reminded me why I'd grown to genuinely care about these people. Underneath all his desperate attempts to impress women was someone who actually did want to connect with people, he'd just been going about it in completely the wrong way.
"I think," Howard said carefully, "I may have been approaching this entirely backwards."
"Welcome to the club," I replied. "Most of us figure that out the hard way."
"But how do you build real confidence? The kind that doesn't require scripts or techniques?"
The question was so earnest that it made my chest tighten with something between sympathy and genuine affection. Howard was asking for help, really asking, not trying to reverse-engineer someone else's success.
"This is what the Attractiveness power is actually about," I realized. "Not manipulation or shortcuts, but genuine growth through real accomplishment and authentic connection."
"You build confidence by doing things you're actually good at," I said. "By accomplishing stuff that matters to you, by helping people in ways that make a real difference. You're brilliant, Howard. You're an aerospace engineer working on projects that most people can't even understand. That's not nothing."
"But none of that seems to matter when I'm talking to women."
"Because you're not talking to them about things that matter to you. You're trying to perform some version of what you think they want to see. But what if instead of trying to be impressive, you just tried to be helpful? What if instead of demonstrating your value, you just tried to add value to their day?"
Howard nodded slowly, and I could see him absorbing the concept on a level deeper than intellectual understanding. "So the confidence comes from actually having something worth offering?"
"The confidence comes from knowing that your worth as a person isn't determined by whether any particular woman finds you attractive. When you stop needing validation from every interaction, you can actually focus on making the interaction pleasant for both people involved."
We stood there for a moment in companionable silence, and I felt something I hadn't experienced much since awakening in Stuart's life—the satisfaction of genuinely helping someone without ulterior motives or supernatural advantages. This wasn't about using my knowledge of Howard's future to manipulate his timeline. This was just one friend helping another figure out how to be happier.
"Stuart?" Howard said quietly.
"Yeah?"
"Thanks. I know I can be... a lot. But you actually treated this like a real problem worth solving, not just something to mock or dismiss."
"Howard," I said, meaning it completely, "you're one of the smartest people I know. You just needed to point that intelligence in the right direction."
As we rejoined the others, I noticed the subtle shift in Howard's demeanor. His shoulders had relaxed, his smile seemed more genuine, and when another woman entered the shop, he didn't immediately launch into performance mode. Instead, he went back to browsing comics with Raj, looking more comfortable in his own skin than I'd seen him in weeks.
"Maybe that's what these powers are really for," I thought, watching my friends engage in the kind of easy conversation that made my shop feel like a community rather than just a business. "Not to exploit knowledge or manipulate outcomes, but to actually help people become better versions of themselves."
The void had given me incredible advantages, but the most meaningful moments came from using those advantages to lift other people up. And that, more than any supernatural ability, felt like something worth the weight of keeping secrets.
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