Good explanation! When I had this issue that he has, I was unable to switch between tty’s because there was no output at all. Should only need to force restart for it to come back and be fine. But always a good reminder to have backups, time shift is my best friend!

I had this happen the other day on mint as well, I just waited a few minutes till I thought it would be done and restarted (force power off). Everything was fine after that.