Please forgive my use of a journal to ask a completely selfish question. How in the same hell does one rig shoulders in Blender?

To clarify, I use the Rigify addon to rig my character models. Over the last few years, I've gotten pretty damn good at rigging and weight painting. Butts? Faces? No problem. Shoulders? Complete and total failure, every single time, requiring painstaking and time consuming shape key fixes.

I've sunk hours and hours into different methods while also breaking myself into pieces trying to find relevant tutorials, and the only consensus I can find is "shoulders are really, really hard." This is a shot in the dark, but have any of you solved this problem? Do *you* know a good tutorial or method you can share with / teach me? I see beautiful shoulders on pro VRChat models all the time, so it's obviously possible. Of course, I'm sure those modelers would want to keep their secrets to themselves. I won't be surprised if this doesn't go anywhere, and I continue bashing my head into this wall.

But I would be so, so grateful for even just a nudge in the right direction.