>>153281
Touhou is based mainly on the games whose lore can be generally learned about here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28Zg2XfHGT0
If a person learns the above, then reads a bit about the characters, then they are mostly good to go as a newb

There are files in games to read containing canon lore, the games themselves as you play them, and also prints that expand on things, mostly manga
There are parts inside official prints that are not canon
It is hard to enjoy touhou without playing the games, they take getting used to and it is not easy at first but they pay off. I don't play maniacally but I like to do a lunatic run from time to time!

Touhou canon and story begins at touhou 6 as zun wanted to do a story reset after the first 5 games
Whatever before touhou 6 is a suggestion but not deified canon
That is it, that is what is sufficient to remember, beyond that comes imagination

Touhou is not strict with copyrights so people made lots of things reimagined or with story bending or entirely different. There is a good chunk of things that people around touhou decided shall be true that were not mentioned in canon or even canon claims againist. As you immerse you learn what feels correct regarding lore.

Like Ran and Chen both are shikis and there is no personality inside, they have no free will which does not make sense for them to interact in any other manner than pragmatic but people agreed that they play and have fun. Or people made entire stories just about Mystia and Kyouko singing together from time to time in one obscure line in manga if I remember correctly.

There was a fun made up story about the origin of rumia's ribbon that is visible on her, zun only stated it is a seal that she cannot ever take off her hair, mentioned in game files if I am not mistaken over 21 years ago
I will warn that watching the story of rumia's ribbon without a general idea of touhou will not bring emotions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YysHBe0s1bw

Soon touhou becomes all you need from fiction. Made up world, dynamics, characters, stories and whatever a good fantasy book would have. Realistically all characters are female so it also feels warm and touhou has so much ecchi that it would be hard to enjoy all of it in one lifetime, especially that each comiket and reitaisai flood the internet with more of it, but also more games and regular non erotic stories, and music.

Touhou music is very specific. Some songs will invoke fascination immediately, and some are acquired taste by listening to them for 100th time. Some are worse and some are better. If you wish to listen to the original songs they are in games, there is a music room menu where you can listen to any song in the game without playing. Whatever the original song were - there is usually between 1000 to 10000 versions of it made by regular people. It is my estimate. There is a lot of arenji to enjoy if you like one of them. And people make cute drawing of touhous all the time. Touhou has everything that a fantasy could have. I dropped everything for touhou because touhou had it all combined and better. Touhou has thousands of fan games too. Like Mystia's Izakaya which I enjoyed.

Touhou is available as a torrent
https://nyaa.si/view/1743411
You can run the file inside that torrent called thprac (available code on github) to modify anything about variables in game and practice any part of a level at will
The vpatch file is if I am not mistaken for resizing windows with games and other visual/clock things
The key remapper is for chaning controls to fit your liking as touhou does not have it by default
If you have your own MIDI device you can instead play the songs with your own MIDI
First 5 touhous need an emulator because they were not made for windows
Nyaa.si is where I go first for anything japan-media related, there are manga and songs and anything touhou related imaginable
You can follow basic torrenting client install and torrent the touhou games above with your bare IP as zun does not care to catch individual people
Pixiv is where you go for infinite supply of touhou images
I go mostly to yabai.si for touhou porn as loli, rape, guro and anything deranged is perfectly allowed there and very easy to use
It is recommended to know a bit about symbolism of anything japanese or culture in general to have a good grip on how touhou story reimagines old myths

Most touhous are not available to buy on steam I think. Zun moron deleted source code "by mistake" for touhou 6 so it will never be fixed without mods and never available on steam or anything.