I started the thieves guild quests by accident. The main quest asked me to go talk to GUY, and when I did, he asked me to start stealing things. It was not immediately apparent that he had spun me off onto a whole new quest line. Point is, I never wanted to be in the thieves guild, but I've been duped. So I figured I would just finish up the chore he assigned me, and then reject the next quest to get that line out of my journal. But of course, that won't happen.

When I finish one quest, the same action that completes that quest begins the next one. CMON. The whole idea here is to get that entry out of my journal! Honestly, I feel like I've been roped into the thieves guild and I don't have an out.

Not that this is entirely unrealistic, I mean they are the thieves guild. They probably con people all the time. But really? I just want to most the quest into the "forget about this" category. Any thoughts?

It's the same for me with the Mages... I just won't do their quests, that's all... it might be in the journal to bother me, but whatever..

You're going to get a lot of replies that don't understand and say "Ignore it lol" Yeah that's not the point, this "Automatic quest starting" nonsense has been an annoyance for me as well, If it's in the Journal it means it's STARTED, I don't want to start it without being given the option to completely refuse having my Journal being updated with it, it's the principle of the matter.

You can avoid the Riften guy by talking to the Bartender in a Tavern instead and complete the objective without starting Thieves Guild, however I never managed to find a way to avoid joining the Mage's College.

All of a sudden I'm suspecting that Bethesda did this on purpose. Did they really just rig the main quest in order to deliberately run us into the major factions? As if we couldn't find them well enough on our own?

...Seriously?

Considering many of the new features are geared towards the players who simply want to enjoy and complete an adventure and be done with it (I'm not picking on idiots or Console Gamers, it's just a fact) then I'd say there's every possibility that they've done this on purpose.

I find the lack of choices in this game to be disturbing, don't get me wrong I love Skyrim but there are a whole load of problems I never had in previous games.

No, you just can't ignore quests.

"Oh, that random guy told me to be a Stormcloak, and I got a quest for it."
*looks at pile of dead Stormcloaks ten feet behind me*
"Yeah, I think I won't be doing that any time soon."

Bottom line is this:
Skyrim needs to ask me more questions, and stop giving me orders. When I meet someone I don't want a quest popping into my journal "Save the princess!" and then just sitting there forever because I don't want to.

What should happen is I meet that person and the journal says "Should I save this princess? Yes/No."

You know you don't HAVE to do a quest just because you receive it right? A whole bunch of them are procedurally generated, and you receive them from just walking past people. It's called the journal, think of it as a list of notes about what you can do, not what you have to do, like Morrowind.

In Morrowind for example, it was different, the Journal would be something like "While on a road I passed a group of guards escorting a Stormcloak Prisoner, he shouted out to me suggesting I should join their cause in windhelm" Then that was it, no quest was started or anything like that, it was just simply mentioned and then if you refused it'd be like "I decided against joining the Stormcloak Rebellion"

This isn't a Journal in Skyrim, it's a quest tracker and the game even says "Quest Name Started" when something is added automatically, it's extremely annoying for those of us who want to complete as much as we can within the bounds of our "character" Unlike Morrowind the Journal rarely started Quests, just mentioned them as though you've considered it and then a note saying if you refused/accepted.

The point is that my journal is something I check regularly. I check it to make sure I'm getting my laundry list done. I don't like having 5 quests sitting in it that I never had any intention of doing in the first place. Why would I write that in my journal?

I wouldn't. The journal needs to keep track of the things I want it to keep track of. Thus, I still suggest the "ask me first" option. Instead of a "Go here and get the thing" entry in the journal, it needs to be a question "Do you want this thing here?"

Saying no is quite different from simply ignoring something.