Ok so the good news is I did the whole pacnew-checker thingy until there where no more pacnews left to check! and lo and behold my computer hath not yet exploded! So that’s a relief… 
(my common sense also told me to back up all the relevant config and .pacnew files in question juuust in case I mess something up)
The not so great news is that my TTY situation is still as bleak as the deepest depths of outer space… so I created a new topic here in case anyone can help: Switching to TTY from GUI yields a black screen without any text or login prompt
Thank you to everyone who replied and tried to help me. You guys are all great. 