Actually, the shudder makes more sense than an upwards recoil does. Recoil only goes up if it applies upward-rotating torque around your ship's center of mass. So, recoil can go every which way depending on where your hard points are, including (on a well designed ship) directly backwards. Also remember that horking massive ships are shooting these huge weapons. Yeah, your hornets are taller than you, but your herc is also near the size of your house.
If we're to get really Newtonian, then we could say that missiles and maxim cannons would push you backwards/slow you down when you shoot them because of conservation of momentum, and that lasers have recoil because photons have momentum, but then we're in conflict with the laws of sub-luminal lasers and non-Newtonian flight engines, along with the entire theory of game balance, because by those laws, most weapons should work like the morning star.
Aiming is already hard enough (for me at least), so we don't need to make it harder yet. However, if you want the effect for a mod you're making, then I think it should be possible to hack lateral thrusters to thrust you backwards a little whenever you shoot certain weapons. I'm no coder, so I don't know how hard that would be, but it's an idea.
