Just for emphesis

I got a really interesting bit of feedback for my Alias story "Triangle". The person was honest enough to point out what I know are serious weaknesses in the story, but the really interesting part is that she said she almost didn't read the thing at all because I use "/" for emphesis. I have never heard of this annoying anyone.

I am strongly tempted to tell this person that she should have read the story on the Silverlake archive, or my own site, so those unsightly slashes would be nicely replaced with italics. I mean, I'm sorry, but there is no way I can duplicate italics in plain text. I have to use something to indicate my stresses- I stress a lot more words than I should, probably- and my characters' thoughts. When I write longhand, I underline them, but that doesn't work in plain text, either.

I used "*"s once, and "_"s, and no one ever complained about those. And my buddies at the Star Wars Galaxy roleplaying game use "~" to indicate thoughts, but I've always found that extreamly annoying. I hated the underscores, and got tired of the astericks after a while, but that's just me. So I don't know. Should I have a poll? Which method of emphesis in plain-text do you hate least?

I mean, I got some good feedback from her, really I did, but the last time I chose not to read a story because of its fromatting, it was one of those bad conversions where all the quote marks and apostrophies had been repliaced by superscript numbers. I find that seriously distracting.

So I'm looking at my keyboard trying to figure out what I haven't used yet. Parenthesis, anyone? ;)