{"id":1020,"date":"2016-07-22T15:03:33","date_gmt":"2016-07-22T22:03:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.avatarplanet.com\/?p=1020"},"modified":"2016-07-22T15:03:33","modified_gmt":"2016-07-22T22:03:33","slug":"from-the-archives-remembering-lumier-noir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.avatarplanet.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/22\/from-the-archives-remembering-lumier-noir\/","title":{"rendered":"From the archives: Remembering Lumier Noir"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>(I originally published this article on examiner.com on April 6, 2016)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>When friends die, it\u2019s natural for us to praise them and remember all that was good about them, but when the man behind Lumiere Noir died last August, I discovered that he was far more amazing than I suspected.\u00a0 I knew him in two virtual worlds, we exchanged emails, and he was one of the first people to purchase my novel when I published it, but after his death I realized I never really knew him.\u00a0 I wish I had.\u00a0 That\u2019s one problem in virtual worlds.\u00a0 We tend to get to know only one aspect of a person\u2019s life.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1021\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1021\" style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.avatarplanet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/030511110_2003-05-11_SWKMignon.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1021 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/www.avatarplanet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/030511110_2003-05-11_SWKMignon.jpg\" alt=\"030511110_2003-05-11_SWK&amp;Mignon\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.avatarplanet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/030511110_2003-05-11_SWKMignon.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.avatarplanet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/030511110_2003-05-11_SWKMignon-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 85vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1021\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Swen Wu Kong (left) in There.com with Mignon on May 11, 2003. Swen Wu Kong was Lumier Noir in Second Life and Vincent Frost in RL.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Today would have been his 52<sup>nd <\/sup>birthday.\u00a0 I can\u2019t let it pass without remembering him.\u00a0 In RL he was Vincent Frost, an ESL teacher in Plano, Texas.\u00a0 I knew him as Lumiere Noir in Second Life and as Swen Wu King in the virtual world There.com.<\/p>\n<p>This month is the thirteenth anniversary of my meeting \u00a0Swen Wu Kong in There.\u00a0 I was new to virtual worlds, but he was an old hand who was transitioning from The Sims through There to Second Life.\u00a0 Exploring There with him was an eye-opening experience to this noob.\u00a0 He also got me started building in There and then in Second Life.<\/p>\n<p>Education was his passion.\u00a0 When I finally followed him into Second Life in 2004, I found he had already begun building his Ivory Tower of Primitives and once again, I learned from him what I needed to know to build in this new virtual world. It\u2019s an amazing resource that\u2019s still in existence. SL members can visit it at s<a href=\"http:\/\/slurl.com\/secondlife\/Natoma\/247\/134\/29\">lurl.com\/secondlife\/Natoma\/247\/134\/29<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You can read Wagner James Au\u2019s tribute to him at \u00a0\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nwn.blogs.com\/nwn\/2015\/08\/ivory-tower-of-prims-second-life-lumiere-noir.html\">http:\/\/nwn.blogs.com\/nwn\/2015\/08\/ivory-tower-of-prims-second-life-lumiere-noir.html<\/a>\u00a0 and you can visit his memorial Facebook page at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/LumiereNoir.tx?fref=tl_fr_box&amp;pnref=lhc.friends\">https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/LumiereNoir.tx?fref=tl_fr_box&amp;pnref=lhc.friends<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(I originally published this article on examiner.com on April 6, 2016) When friends die, it\u2019s natural for us to praise them and remember all that was good about them, but when the man behind Lumiere Noir died last August, I discovered that he was far more amazing than I suspected.\u00a0 I knew him in two &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.avatarplanet.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/22\/from-the-archives-remembering-lumier-noir\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;From the archives: Remembering Lumier Noir&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-report"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.avatarplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.avatarplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.avatarplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.avatarplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.avatarplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.avatarplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.avatarplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.avatarplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.avatarplanet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}