This post is only possible because of @JagexHelperPacman. My email looks+like@this.com and the email confirmation link was always broken and invalid because of it. So now I can actually log into the forums without being redirected to my account settings.
I consider myself fairly tech savvy but it didn't occur to me to change the encoding on the url to replace '+' with '%2b'. Dude came in with a clutch save and forwarded the issue to the email team so that others aren't affected for much longer.
Mad props to the support teams, and more importantly Pacman. Waka waka.
13-Apr-2017 12:34:46