Is non-scaling possible for archive/category thumbnails?

My previous question on this topic asked how. Maybe I should have asked if it can be done?

I’ve tried the plugin Default Thumbnail Plus v1.0.2.3, but that doesn’t achieve the results I’m after.

I’ve tried different themes and they all resize the feature image instead of grabbing the default thumbnail from ‘. get_bloginfo( ‘stylesheet_directory’ ) . ‘/images/thumbnail-default.jpg”‘

Why would indexed pages (i.e., myblog.net) provide the default thumbnail (instead of scaling down the full size), but not for the archive, category, or tag directory (i.e., myblog.net/2013/08/etc, or myblog.net/category/etc, or myblog.net/tag/etc?

Is what I’m trying to do something that cannot be done? I’m using a child theme with loops.