It's strange, but nowadays, so many people treat cliche as the devil of writing, that if you're clever, you can use all the cliches in the genre you're in, and come off as incredibly genuine, because it's so different than everyone else's "SUBVERSIONS. SUBVERSIONS EVERYWHERE" work, it's a breath of fresh air that nobody else is offering.

Seriously, there's a fine line between avoiding a boring, cliche story, and excising any quality from the plot because something is barely arguably used before. Celebrate, acknowledge, or invert, deconstruct, and then reconstruct a cliche you use, it's a lot more entertaining than the "dramatic" deviation.