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[Nas92]

I tried embarking in evil areas because I was getting bored of my usual calm or mirthful embarks. So I embark on a haunted forest with a brook and mostly flat ground and begin my fortress. I brought some armor and a silver warhammer and one of my dwarves had pretty good military skills. I had three miners so I thought I could protect myself well enough. After a few seconds harpies come flying in, I had the miners and the hammerdwarf deal with them. Unfortunately one of the miners died because he was knocked into a pond. I wanted three miners not two so I just used CTRL-Alt-Del to quit the game. Then I tried another time, now I added a speardwarf, an Ogre appeared and killed me. My questions are:
1. I know that losing is fun, but getting killed without having a chance to actually get around building you fortress is not. So what skills and items should I focus on to do better? And how should I mess around with my embark points to have enough for what I need?
2. What controls that annoying knockback effect? Once I almost lost an Axe Lord squad because they were knocked into ponds, I had to let the water in the fort to save them. What should I do to make that knockback effect a bit less hazardous?

[Tibbles]

Make stairways in all ponds in well-traffic'd areas.

[ISGC]

1: The skills you embark with won't matter much if you're facing off against ogres.  However, wardogs are the perfect defense against harpies, I have found.  just try and get everyone inside as fast as possible, but leave the dogs at the wagon because harpies steal your things.  after the first migrant wave, you'll want to move all the items into stockpiles, though.
2:what you can do is channel one square next to every pond on the map.  It will only take a minute or two (unless you have a lot of ponds), but it will make ramps going out of every pond that can be used to escape should your dwarves find themselves in them.  The mechanic that, most often, puts your dwarves in ponds is dodging.  If they are fighting near the edge of a pond, they will dodge attacks by moving a square to the side, straight into the pond.  It is less likely that they will be knocked into the pond, but it's possible.

[Nas92]

Okay, now I'm attempting a Sinister embark. The zombie elephants wandering around worry me, but otherwise I'm doing fairly well. If all else fails I can just build a drawbridge and seal myself in and lower it only when traders or migrants come. Ponds should be no problem now, because it's scorching hot here, the brook is a good enough water source. Can you actually drown in a brook?

[Mckee]

Only if you dig/channel/collapse the top, solid layer of the brook. Basically its a river with a walkable tile over the top. Remove those brook tiles, and yes, you can drown.

Found that through trial and... well actually just through error.

[Plutoman]

Alternatively - accept that you might face a few losses embarking in one of those areas and plan accordingly.  If the point is to alleviate boredom - having a perfectly set up fortress with no losses, well, it doesn't really matter what area you start in for that to get boring.