I’ve figured the second and third question out by myself.
In case anyone else is having issues of particle effects not playing the flipbook in the correct order or playing it independently of when the particle appears, make sure you don’t use the flipbook inside the texture, but instead the SubUV function within the “required” tab and then adjust the frames with the SubImage Index.
Still one question remains, is there a way to tell the particle what axis to rotate around? On the flipbook texture, it seems to always center it at the middle, but I need the axis offset to be on the left / right side of the flipbook images.