Back in 2011, I had a friend randomly show me a video of a dude going agaisnt Flandre in Lunatic. I liked the music and the game seemed hard but I didn't really show much interest on it tbh.
After that, most of my interaction with touhou for the following years were random posts online but MOSTLY the music of the series being used in Super Mario World Romhacks:
Songs like these constantly plagued the hacks, I didn't know what they were from at first but after some time I could tell wich ones were touhou music just from the general style of the music writing... even if I didn't play the games, ZUN's music is personal and easy to recognize.
This led me to look into the fandom a bit and I noticed they had tons of fun and produced lots of content, I told myself I'd try to get involved and play the games, that was back in 2014 or so and well... I did! 4 years later BUT I STILL DID! So here I am now, been drawing lotta 2hu and enjoying the fan content.
Also losing my head everytime I'm playing the games and go OH I KNOW THIS FROM THIS MARIO HACK! lmao