Hmmm, wonder if I could hack it so that on journal home/recent entries page it shows journal title/subtitle, but on everything else it shows page title/journal title? Probably...

Sure you can. Maybe this:

function Page::print_head_title() 
{
    if ($this isa RecentPage) {
        print """<title>""" + $.global_title + $*text_default_separator + $.global_subtitle + """</title>n""";
    }
    else {
        print """<title>""" + $this->view_title() + $*text_default_separator + $.global_title + """</title>n""";
    }
}

And then you'd have to edit some view_title functions so that they display the page title to your liking.