It only occurred to me now that you can do Dragon Rising and kill dragons (random quests for the Companions), but pretend to not be Dragonborn. Sure its a cop out for not being able to do the Civil War without doing Dragon Rising and the dialogue being shoddy, but its at least an option.

What do you mean? Once you kill the dragon at the watchtower, you are now Dragonborn.

Technically you're Dragonborn at the start of the game, but I digress.

Technically, you're either Dragonborn at the start (because you can learn words of power) or not Dragonborn until you approach your first dragon kill (because only then do you gain the ability yo Shout).

My Redguard (who I'm RPing as NOT Dragonborn) nearly killed Miramar, then scampered off and let Irileth and her people finish things). As a result, the dragon wound up rotting in the field. Until it started migrating, but that's another story.

You could do this before.

I had a Nord who liked to pretend he was Argonian. He drowned.

lol. Nice.

Granted its not the best solution, but its the only one we really have.

Also, Bethesda automatically spends the soul on the Unrelenting Force Shout to help the Derperborns who have trouble pressing two buttons, so you'll always have UF after Dragon Rising.

Paradoxically, their "help" made me have trouble unlocking a Shout the first time I tried to use one besides the ones they force feed you, because the game just gave them to me rather than giving me a tutorial teaching me how to go about selecting which one I wanted to unlock.

That was rather silly on Bethesda's part; a very brief tutorial would have been better (like is the case with Vampire Lords).

OP: The way I see it, you are Dragonborn from birth, you just don't know it yet.

"Got to thinking, maybe I'm the Dragonborn, but just don't know it yet." -- Guard

Simple things like that shouldn't even need a tutorial. Like lockpicking or enchanting and stuff are such things that anyone should be able to figure out by themselves. If one can't figure out simple things like that on their own, then they deserve to be left on the beach.

I always skip tutorials and stuff whenever I get the chance, and figure out things on my own.

I mostly agree with that too, but I didn't want to make those people who originally had trouble feel bad. Although I stated it differently in my above post, I think that since there are already tutorials for lockpicking, enchanting, etc. that there should have been one for the shouts too or else there should have been no tutorials included in the game at all.