As soon as Olli started inquiring more about the risks of fireworks and their potential alternatives, Marley's eyes lit up like a child on Christmas morning. She certainly hadn't been expecting someone to be interested in getting the facts, especially not the woman who had already essentially mocked her for it. An agreement to disagree was one thing, but actual curiosity and an interest in learning? Marley obviously didn't give Olli enough credit. "Well, they use really toxic metals to make fireworks to get the colors and stuff. Like barium nitrate, that's what they use to make green, is poisonous and can cause radioactive fallout. So, when the fireworks explode, they release dusts of all these toxic metal compounds into the air, and then we're sitting around breathing in all these toxic fumes. Plus, they contaminate ground and surface waters, which basically damages the entire ecosystem as a whole; like, animals are drinking from these basically radioactive lakes and even though we filter our water, it's impossible to filter it 100%, so we drink it in too. And most of them bioaccumulate, so these toxins build up in your body and can lead to chronic poisoning because most of the time, you end up absorbing them faster than your body can get rid of them. Never mind that most fireworks are imported from China, so they're heavy in lead, arsenic, and mercury compounds because those are cheaper for production, but even higher-grade ones that don't cut those corners have chemical substances in them that are just as bad for you. It's just that no one freaks out when they hear that something's made of, say, perchlorate and nitric oxide, because those don't have the same negative connotations of something like lead, but that doesn't mean they aren't just as bad for you. Then there's all the sulfur and everything, which is the main component in acid rain, and the different gases the combustion process itself creates... I could probably go forever, honestly, but you're probably bored."
Marley took the brief moment of rest from her preaching to take a particularly long hit from the joint, collecting her thoughts in order to get into the specifics of environmentally-friendly fireworks. The pot definitely wasn't helping her become any less scatterbrained; it was difficult enough giving an impromptu speech on the chemical compounds used in fireworks sober. She realized she probably didn't make any sense, but with the musky smoke already kicking in and fogging up her mind, she found it a little difficult to care. "Right. So. Environmentally-friendly fireworks! They're technically called 'electronic pyrotechnics,' so basically they make these huge explosions of light just like actual fireworks but by generating light instead, and they form these huge canopies that rain down like, rose petals and biodegradable glitter and confetti. I don't know all the mechanics as to how they work, though, just that that's what they do." She paused. "...I forgot who I'm supposed to pass the peace pipe to," she confessed, giggling.
By that point, Marley had talked so much that she was relatively certain, or as certain as anyone could be in her state of mind, anyway, that her nigh unbearable thirst had nothing to do with cotton-mouth. But then they were talking about all of the absurd amounts of unresolved homoerotic sexual tension in Inception, and honestly, Marley probably could write an essay about that just as well as she could about her moral opposition to fireworks. "I totally saw that, too! About Arthur and Eames! But I could see Arthur and Cobb, except it was weird that they had these two girls in the movie and Cobb was literally the only male with any kind of sexual tension with either of them. And even then, Mal and Ariadne had more underlying sexual tension than Mal and Cobb. That whole 'do you know what it is to be a lover' scene in Cobb's dream? Seriously. But Eames had sexual tension with Saito--the elevator thing, really--and even Fischer, too. He's like the town bicycle - everybody gets a ride." At that, Marley started laughing again, feeling quite clever despite dimly registering that she had probably heard that expression somewhere before.