#theriolink

Yes! Otherlinkers can have their linktype's instincts, absolutely.

And the intensitity doesn't have anything to do with the type of identity. Like, a linker can feel instincts as strongly as a therian. And there's therians who don't or barely feel their theriotype's instincts. Same for fictionkin and their fictotypes. The difference between kin/therian and link is that linkers choose their linktype. We choose and develop and strengthen it.

For a long long time of my life I had dreams in which my body is that of the digimon Beelzemon, specifically the winged version but without any guns. It was that way ever since I watched Digimon Tamers as a kid and, you know, Beelzemon looks sooo cool to me and I latched onto his appearance. I had dreams in which I'm a beelzemon for at least 10 years. Usually I didn't have those dreams for months and then randomly one happened, without me engaging with digimon whatsoever. When I was a beelzemon, the dream was almost never digimon-themed, so it makes sense that I didn't need an irl digimon-related trigger to cause them. I think it was just the physicality of Beelzemon's body type and extra limbs (wings) that was somehow tied to my subconscious self-image.

You can already see that I'm talking about this in past-tense. Why?

Over the last months this dream self-image has shifted away from Beelzemon, first into a less beelzemon-y but still similar-to-beelzemon form (same body type, wings, lizard-y tail, black colour scheme), but then took a deep dive into becoming. Into. Into bird person. Green woodpecker person. Those birds. I'm obsessed.

Okay I want to explain.

I started linking green woodpeckers last year. It was a really random choice and I can't fully remember how it went. I think I was reminded of how back in the day when I first looked into the concept of otherkin, I tried to find out if I'm a therian because I've always felt very animalistic but no animal ever clicked. Figures that all my animalistic urges are just plain human and civilized western society is incredibly weird about us acting as removed from animals as possible. Anyway, I think I then thought "The experience of feeling inside the shoes of a real animal would be so interesting. … Oh. I can try pushing myself into that feeling. I can link an animal." and then went to bird and then green woodpecker. I think all of this happened within a few seconds. It's been a downhill (uphill) tumble from there because, while I did focus on the identity then and there to help it stick, it really didn't take much reinforcement.