Linking does work the way I expect in 3.1.
I probably won’t have a chance to really dive into it for a short bit.
I have some things that need to be addressed first, but I definitely want to get to the bottom of it.
For complex or overlapping shapes, like the crescents at the armpits, being able to mask with shift+click and ctrl+l is way too handy to give up. (If you have your edges done right, the linked faces it selects go by the UV islands, which is super handy.)
