I should keep a closer eye on by inbox. Turns out the memory allocation issue I was experiencing was in fact down to the avatar settings. Honestly I had been following the thread, I just must’ve missed the part where it became relevant to my own issue.
So yes, changed the avatar priorities, and it ended the issue and finally got to upload the buddypress plugin without it causing the site to spit up errors. I can finally play about with all the settings now.
Thank you Mr. Papa for your help!