I think most of your questions have been answered, but there is something I can add. In terms of a fading effect, if you're willing to mess around with changing the palette then this is something you can do! I made a module called PaletteFade that lets you smoothly transition from one palette to another. If you have text set to a certain colour in the palette, and use PaletteFade to change that colour from being the same as the background to a distinct colour, it'll look like the text is fading in. There's a few other tools in the Contraption Bazaar that can be helpful for messing with palettes if this is something you want to do.
Or the easier option is having two cards and transitioning between them as mentioned elsewhere haha.