Young Adult Dystopian Stories
The category of dystopian stories is commonly marketed towards young adult audiences. There are a couple reasons this age group of teenagers and young adults are such a good audience for these types of stories. Often, at this age, people are branching out and creating opinions and lives separate from their families for the first time, and broadening their view of the world. This helps them connect to the protagonists of dystopian stories, who are also often teens or young adults discovering the world on their own and working to change it. This sort of view towards social activism and change is one most young adults feel towards our own world.
It is also extremely common in dystopian stories for young women to be the protagonists. This is because the audience for dystopian novels are more commonly female, but also because it can challenge societal norms in these dystopian worlds, which when crafted to highlight the worst parts of our own world, often highlight the oppression of women.
Post-Apocalyptic Dystopia
There are many types of dystopian categories seen in media, post-apocalyptic being one. Some examples of post-apocalyptic dystopian stories are The Hunger Games, The Matrix, Fallout, Station Eleven, and Ready Player One, though there are also many more. This type of dystopia is defined by the aftermath of an apocalypse, often leading to the rise of new oppressive governments or regimes. Some common story elements are survival, desolate landscapes, and a struggle for power against a totalitarian regime.
Most post-apocalyptic narratives take place long after the initial apocalypse, when the new regime and society is firmly established in the world. There is sometimes background given in these stories explaining the initial apocalypse and the direct aftermath, but the protagonists are usually decently separated from the apocalypse themselves. This is somewhat the case in Veal as well, but the apocalypse is more recent, being only 3 weeks old, so these characters also have gone through the apocalypse themselves and the awful direct aftermath.