The way it works is that when u are in a pending subscription state, your local instance knows to deliver you the content and you are effectively subscribed, when you go into the subscribed tab the communities that are pending will be populated. The only thing is that the communities instance has not acknowledged your subscription and does not know to add to the subscriber count of the community till it is processed
“I don’t believe in anything from that ancient book go find me another ancient book that I would believe” -religoids justifying outdated philosophies and untested world views