I've made a lot of wines myself, and sometimes age really does make a difference... I think we have the same problems with lychee here as you have with raspberries there!
I've used fresh figs before and they were pretty nice, I used some starfruit in that batch too I think, and it was a JAO-based experiment. You have to be careful of the seeds though, sometimes they get all caught up in foam and can make a mess... I made that batch in a 1-gal jar and had to keep the jar in a bucket because it kept overflowing.
If you're going to try a mead, I heartily suggest a JAO at some point in the proceedings. Make it according to the recipe once, get a feel for how the acidity from the juice and bitterness from the orange peel balances the sweetness... THEN you can try messing with it, we'll all have plenty of suggestions for you! I suggest if you try the fig idea with the JAO base (3.5 lb honey per gallon, use bread yeast) you use the juice of one lemon per gallon or it'll come out too syrupy.
If you're going to do a traditional mead without adding fruit for flavour, I would suggest you add a handful of raisins per gallon as nutrients. Making wines is usually easier than making meads because the honey doesn't have a lot of nutrients to offer the yeast, whereas fruit wines definitely do.
But good job on figuring it out! How sweet does this recipe turn out for you, with 3 kg honey and 7-8 litres water (which strikes me as approximately correct ratio for JAO)
