Now I'm not exactly a Yuri scholar but I've read a lot of it here and well, most Yuri is pretty generic: All-girls school, lonely MC than is smitted but a mysterious/genki classmate, drama, more drama, they finally get together and the series ends.
Citrus at least seems to be a long series and the character dynamics are interesting, the characters themselves are well defined and mainly are fun (when they're not angsting of course)
Which is why i don't read a lot of generic yuri, see yuri can have familiar settings without being generic (akuma no riddle is set in a school and one of the leads is genki yet that is far from a generic yuri anime.......at the moment anyway......plus it has the problem of trying to be a bit TOO edgy but never mind that!)
Plus as a actual scholar on yuri i can tell you now that what you said is not (completely) true, most yuri that did this was back in the days when yuri was young and people could not think up plots that didn't scream boring at your face, now the yuri like this are fewer in number (even ST that was called generic by a ton of people didn't do this as both girls could be described as energetic (haruka a little more so...also a lot more lewd) and did things quite differently)
Yuri is moving forward which is why i get annoyed when i see plot elements from 90's yuri find their way into modern yuri