How to change cursor shape, color, and blinkrate of Linux Console?

I know I can change some fundamental settings of the Linux console, things like fonts, for instance, with dpkg-reconfigure console-setup. But I'd like to change things like blinkrate, color, and shape (I want my cursor to be a block, at all times). I've seen people accomplishing this. I just never had a chance to ask those people how to do that. *I don't mean terminal emulator windows, I mean the Linux text console, you reach with Ctrl+Alt+F-key* I'm using Linux Mint at the moment, which is a Debian derivate. I'd like to know how to do that in Fedora as well, though. ---------- ***Edit:** I might be on to something* I learned from this website , how to do the changes I need. But I'm not finished yet. I've settled on using echo -e "\e[?16;0;200c" for now, but I've got a problem: when running applications like vim or irssi, or attaching a screen session, the cursor reverts back to being a blinking gray underscore. And of course, it only works on this one tty all other text consoles are unaffected. So how can I make those changes permanent? How can I populate them to other consoles?