I really dislike /italic/. Relative to the slashes, the letters look like they're skewed in the wrong direction. Surely it should be \italic\. If unifying underlines and italics doesn't suit you.
Funny thing happened when I tried to type that out: typing /italics/ caused libre office to automatically italicize the word.
Demonstration: https://codepen.io/adrusi/full/poJXRgy
Always thought the idea was that the first slash pushes the letters over, and the second one keeps them from falling down completely.
The unification of underline and italic is an artifact of the limited technology of the typewriter, and I see no reason to preserve that.