E S S A Y S
Cliché: It's Nobody's Friend by Sorcha
Unless you're turning a cliché upside down and ripping it apart in the most vicious way possible, you should avoid them. All of them, they're just not good. It takes an incredibly skilled writer to be able to take a well known cliché and turn it into a fic that we haven't already read, paraphrased in every other fic that used the same cliché.
Think of it this way, would you steal someone's plot? No. How would you feel if someone stole yours? Pretty damn violated. The reason is suddenly your fiction isn't special anymore because it's not unique. It might be a well-written piece of work, but if someone has already read a similar plot then it's hardly going to keep their interest, is it? No. And this is why it's best to stay clear of clichés.
Most inadequate, unconfident writers use them because they're a safety template that they can structure their story around without too much thought of plot or cause and effect. Think of it like a master chef cooking a meal, he never stays strictly to a recipe, not even his own, because variety is the spice of life. So, never limit yourself to some predefined structure that the lowest common denominator of writers use. You are better than clichés and with a little imagination, thought and help from a beta you are going to write a better story without them.
Of course, as I've said above, some writer's manage to cleverly manipulate clichés so that they are no longer a cliché. In the Buffy fandom many writers and readers would claim that Angel becoming human and marrying Buffy is a cliché, but there is fic out there where they don't live happily ever after. Where they get bored of a mundane life, end up not being able to stand each other and mourning their superpowers. So
Just beware of an anti-cliché, cliché: which is a cliché which has been turned upside down by so many writers that it has become a cliché itself. So see? All in all you'd be best to take a more original approach and forget their babies exist.