I can't tell you how annoying this was to write. I sacrificed a lot of features I had already implemented (colour-coding of VM state, context-sensitive menus, etc.) because I just could not get the UI to repaint after returning from the virtual serial console with them in place. Even something as simple as adding shortcut prompts to the actions menu broke things. Extremely annoying, but console access is much more important, so I went with the MVP: good is the enemy of adequate.