CURSE IT refreshed the page and lost my half-post.  Anyhow.  [@Shoryu Magami], I've seen the cosmos/existence done only once, but it was fun.  Noice~

The delay was because I was looking for Character Calculus terms that I didn't manage to find, but basically I think that it is possible to have a story without (main) characters as such.  Telling the story of a lake over time, or the movement of glaciers in the ice age, or the slow decline of a dying rural town, these would all work, because the setting itself is a character.

For that matter, while it might be possible to have a story in a black void, the void will have an effect on the characters, and they may not have started there -- thus the settings of their pasts are also important.  If A is part of B, and also important on its own, I'd say A is more important that B.  ^.^